


When You're Gone

by illusemywords



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Character Death, Derek Hale/Stiles Stilinski Endgame, Fairy Tale Retellings, Hallucinations, Headaches & Migraines, Hospitals, Jealousy, M/M, Memory Loss, Mental Health Issues, Sick Stiles Stilinski, Suicidal Thoughts, The Hale Family, Warning: Kate Argent
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-23
Updated: 2016-10-23
Packaged: 2018-08-24 04:20:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 27,324
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8356939
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/illusemywords/pseuds/illusemywords
Summary: Stiles Stilinski suffers memory loss and terrible headaches after an accident he had the summer he was fifteen. He doesn't remember what happened that summer or why the Hales left town, and no one seems to want to talk about it. Now he's just turned seventeen and he decides that if he ever wants to know what happened to him that summer he'll have to figure it out himself. Eventually, memories start coming back to him, and he starts piecing them together.





	1. Welcome

**Author's Note:**

> This is my entry for the Sterek Big Bang 2016
> 
> The story is inspired by the YA book 'We Were Liars' by E. Lockhart, but you don't have to have read it to understand this story. If you've read the book, you'll probably recognize some of the scenes. There is more of the original book in this story than I wanted there to be, but I tried my best to make it my own, while still sticking to the mood of the original story.
> 
> My Big Bang artist, fictionforlife, has made three beautiful pieces to go with this story, that you will find in the fic below. I couldn't have asked for a better artist - thank you! You can also find her art on her [tumblr](http://ireallyshouldbedrawing.tumblr.com/post/152204134805). Please go give her some love! 
> 
> I'd also like to thank my beta, congotsja, for helping me out with this. 
> 
> On warnings: The character death tag does not apply to Stiles or Derek, but be aware of the 'Angst with a happy ending' tag. I'm not kidding about the angst. Both Stiles and Derek are dealing with some very heavy stuff.
> 
> Also, on the Hale family: Talia Hale and Philip Hale are the parents of Laura, Derek and Cora Hale. Cora is the same age as Stiles, Derek is two years older, and Laura is two years older than Derek. Peter Hale and Carrie Hale are the parents of the young children Johnny and Cady Hale. They don't feature a lot in the story, but I figured it'd be good to know so there isn't any confusion. 
> 
> I don't think there's anything else to say, but if you feel there is something I need to warn for, please tell me. Enjoy!

Welcome to the beautiful Hale family, in the town of Beacon hills, where nothing is as it seems.

No one is a criminal.  
No one is a monster.  
No one is a failure.

The Hales are athletic, tall and handsome. They are old-money Democrats. Their smiles are wide, their chins square. They don’t keep secrets from each other.

It doesn’t matter if raised voices break the silence surrounding that large house in the middle of the woods. It doesn’t matter if their carefully constructed public image doesn’t reflect the way they act in private. It doesn’t matter if there are people who want them gone.

It doesn’t matter if one of them is desperately, desperately in love.

So much in love, that equally desperate measures must be taken.

They are Hales. No one is needy. No one is wrong.

They live in a mansion in the middle of the Beacon Hills preserve.

Perhaps that is all you need to know.

***

His full name is Miroslaw Stilinski, but everyone calls him Stiles. He lives in Beacon Hills, California, with his dad. He has just turned seventeen. He owns a comfortable pillow, a powder blue jeep and a few well-read books.

He used to have thick, beautiful hair, but now it is cut short.  
He used to be strong, but now he is weak.  
He used to be handsome, but now he looks sick.  
It is true he suffers migraines since his accident.  
It is true he does not suffer fools.

He likes a twist of meaning. You see? Suffer migraines. Does not suffer fools. The word means almost the same as it did in the previous sentence, but not quite.

Suffer. You could say it means endure, but that’s not exactly right.

***

Stiles’ story begins before the accident. June of the summer he was eight, his mother passed away after years of illness. Stiles was with her in the hospital when she died. His father was not.

When Claudia died, Stiles and his dad were left behind. Their family was small, but their grief was anything but. John Stilinski, the town sheriff, turned to his work to avoid the house his wife had once filled with her bubbly personality and bright laughter. The time he _was_ at home was largely spent with a glass of whiskey in his hand.

Stiles spent a lot of time at his friend Scott McCall’s house. He didn’t speak much, which was a surprising change from the way he had been before his mother passed away. He used to be all over the place, filled to the brim with questions, wanting to understand everything.

Scott tried to be there for his friend, but it wasn’t easy. No matter what he tried, Stiles wouldn’t open up to him.

The only thing Stiles knew was that he wanted to be with his father.

Seeing the life leave his mother’s eyes had felt like being shot in the chest. He was sitting by her side, and then suddenly he fell. The bullet hole opened wide and his heart rolled out of his rib cage and under the bed. Blood gushed rhythmically from his open wound, then from his eyes, his ears, his mouth.

It didn’t take long for everyone involved to notice that their arrangement wasn’t going to work. Melissa, Scott’s mom, worked full-time as a nurse at the Beacon Hills hospital, and while she loved Stiles like he was her own, she couldn’t always be there to take care of him. He needed his father.

***

As time moved on, Stiles started talking again, laughing, running, jumping, asking questions about anything and everything he could think of. Seemingly, he was doing better.

Still, the sheriff found him sometimes, lying on the floor of his and Claudia’s bedroom. He’d open the closet doors and pull out her favorite clothes and spray her perfume everywhere and then just lie down on the carpeted floor.

The smell always hit John like a punch to the face, a harsh reminder of the woman he had lost. However, since it seemed to be helping his son cope, he didn’t say anything. Instead, he took a hold of himself, seeing the road he was headed down. He stopped drinking, cut down on the hours he spent at work, and made an effort to spend more time with his son.

It wasn’t easy, but life slowly went back to something resembling normal. Nothing could ever be the way it had been before Claudia Stilinski left them, but they did the best they could with what they had.

They learned to balance work and school and home time. The sheriff made sure that there was always food in the fridge, that they always had at least one home cooked dinner together every week and that Stiles always had help with his homework.

***

When Stiles was thirteen, he had to do a school project on a wild animal with someone in his class. He got paired up with Cora Hale, and they picked wolves, which Cora seemed to have an absurd amount of knowledge of considering there hadn’t been any wolves in California for over 60 years – Stiles checked.

They agreed that Stiles would come over to Cora’s house after school so they could work on it. Stiles was excited – The Hales’ house was a large mansion in the middle of the preserve, one of Stiles’ favorite places in Beacon Hills.

Later that day there were in Cora’s room, arguing over which picture they should feature on the front page of their report when there was a knock on the door.

“Come in,” Cora said, not looking up from her laptop.

The door to Cora’s bedroom opened and a boy who looked to be a few years older than them poked his head in.

“Mom wants to know if your friend is staying for dinner,” he said, glancing over at Stiles, waiting for an answer. Stiles stared back, taking in the messy hair and the suntanned skin. He hadn’t actually met him before, but he knew this must be Cora’s brother, Derek. He was two years older than them.

“We’re not really friends,” Cora said. Then, looking over at Stiles, “No offence.”

Stiles tore his eyes away from Derek and rolled his eyes. “None taken,” he said. It was true, after all. They weren’t friends, and if Stiles had been able to pick his partner, Cora probably wouldn’t have been his first choice.

“Um,” Stiles continued, looking back at Derek. “I think I’d better head home. My dad will be home from work soon. Thanks for the offer though.”

Derek nodded. “I’ll tell mom to drive you home,” he said and left, closing the door behind him.

Stiles was left staring at the closed door until Cora cleared her throat to get his attention.

“If you’re done drooling over my brother, I’d like to actually get a decision on this before you leave.”

Stiles blushed, feigning a cough into his elbow so he could hide his face for a few seconds. When he managed to meet Cora’s gaze again she looked unimpressed.

“We can use your picture,” Stiles said, desperately willing his face to turn back to a shade that didn’t resemble a ripe tomato.

Cora smiled, pleased.

A few minutes later they were outside, waiting for Cora’s mom to come drive Stiles home.

“He’s a bit old for you,” Cora said suddenly. Stiles tensed, carefully glancing toward the front door to make sure Talia wasn’t there, listening. “But he’s bi, you know?” Cora continued. Stiles didn’t know. He barely knew the guy’s name. “He won’t get mad if you find him attractive. To be honest he’ll probably just take it as an ego boost.”

Cora smiled kindly, no trace of smugness or sarcasm. Stiles smiled back. Seconds later, Talia Hale opened the door, car keys in hand. “Ready to go?” she asked, and Stiles nodded.

When she stopped the car, Stiles thanked her and opened the door.

“Hey, Stiles?” Talia asked, and Stiles turned back. “You’re welcome at our house any time.” She smiled.

“Thank you,” Stiles said again, and turned to enter his house.

***

A few months after his visit to the Hale house, the summer Stiles was thirteen, he found himself wandering around the preserve. His dad had always told him not to go out there alone, but it was the middle of the day. There were a lot of trees, but daylight still shone through them and lit up Stiles’ path.

And besides, it was the middle of summer, and Scott was away at camp. Stiles was bored out of his mind.

He hadn’t been back here since his mother died, but they had walked this path hundreds of times together. It felt familiar, even though he knew he could never truly recreate the feeling he got when walking this way with her.

It wasn’t a long walk, and soon he found himself at a beautiful lake in the middle of the preserve. The water was still, mirroring the forest surrounding it on its dark surface.

He stepped closer, toeing off his shoes and socks. He sat down on a rock at the edge of the lake and slipped his feet into the water, watching the ripples it sent out in waves, breaking the mirrored illusion. It was a warm day, and the cool water felt good.

He closed his eyes and let the sounds and smells of the lake and the surrounding nature bring him back to those times he came here with his mother. They’d come here on warm summer days, like this one, and Stiles would go swimming in the lake and jump off of rocks, trying to make a big splash with his small body.

His mom would laugh at him, moving around the clearing as he swam, making sure he didn’t go too far out. If he concentrated hard enough he could almost hear the way the twigs would bend and break under her feet.  

Except it wasn’t his imagination. Someone cleared their throat behind him and Stiles jumped, shocked out of his fantasy so suddenly that he almost fell in the water.

A strong hand wrapped around his arm, holding him back. Stiles turned around against the grip and stared up at a familiar dark haired boy – Derek Hale.

Stiles quickly got out of the water, going for his shoes. Derek was still holding his arm though, so he didn’t really get far. Derek’s grip on him was strong. Stiles tried pulling away and Derek let him go, as if he hadn’t realized that he was still holding on.

Stiles rubbed his arm and took two long steps away from Derek. “Sorry,” Derek said sheepishly. “I didn’t mean to scare you.”

“I wasn’t scared,” Stiles lied. His heart was beating harshly in his chest, and from the look Derek was giving him, he could tell.

“Okay,” he said, dropping the topic. “You’re Stiles right? The sheriff’s kid?” he asked instead.

Stiles nodded.

“I’m Derek Hale.”

“I know,” Stiles said. “We met a few months ago. Cora and I were doing a school project on wolves?”

“Oh yeah,” Derek answered, nodding. “What are you doing out here?” he continued, curious.

Stiles looked back out at the water, still once again. “I used to come here with my mom,” he said quietly, not looking at Derek.

“Oh,” Derek answered.

Stiles cleared his throat, eager to get rid of the awkward tension that usually came when he talked about his mother. “So, what are you doing here?”

“Well, this part of the forest is technically a part of our property. So I was just taking a stroll in our garden when I found someone trespassing on private property,” Derek answered, and Stiles turned around to see a teasing smile on his face.

Stiles stared at the older boy, eyes wide. “How much of the preserve do you actually own?” he asked. He knew the Hale family were rich, but he never realized just how far that money could reach. The lake was easily a ten-minute walk from the Hale house, if not more.

Derek looked thoughtful as he figured out his answer. “I know it’s a lot, like, I know this place is part of it, but I don’t actually know how much more we own. I’ve never really thought about it.”

Stiles huffed a laugh. “Wow. That’s the most pretentious rich-guy thing I’ve ever heard anyone say,” he said.

Derek rolled his eyes. “Well, me and my pretentious rich-guy personality were gonna head back home and order a pizza. Do you want to join me? I could give you a ride home after.”

It was a tempting offer. Stiles bit his lip, eyes darting quickly back to the lake behind to them. Derek seemed to sense his hesitation. “Of course, you’re welcome to stay out here as long as you want if you’d rather do that. We’re all used to people walking around out here. No one will mind.”

“Are you even old enough to drive?” Stiles asked.

Derek laughed. “Well, not technically, but I have a feeling the sheriff won’t mind if it means his son doesn’t have to walk home. Of course, you don’t have to.”

Stiles shook his head. “No – I, um, pizza sounds good.”

Derek smiled. “Okay then.”

Stiles sat down on the ground and pulled his socks and shoes on, and then he followed Derek back to the Hale house.

***

Despite their meeting in the woods and the spontaneous pizza party that followed, Stiles and Derek didn’t really start hanging out until the next fall, when Stiles started high school. And even then, it only started out as sitting at the same table in the library, or Stiles hanging back to watch Scott – and Derek – at lacrosse practice.

Derek was the captain, and Scott was one of the few freshmen to make it onto the team, even if he spent most of the time on the bench. Stiles went to all their games, even the away ones – Coach Finstock was kind enough to let him join the team on the bus considering he didn’t have his license yet.

Somehow, Scott always fell asleep in his seat on the way home. And Derek was always nearby, with an empty seat next to him. The trip home quickly became Stiles’ favorite part of away games. 

One day, when Stiles was studying in the library, Derek dropped down in the seat across from him. Stiles looked up from the book he was reading and took in Derek’s conflicted expression.

“What’s up?” Stiles asked as he went back to reading.

“How do you feel about flowers?” Derek asked.

Stiles stopped, eyes still locked on the page but unable to continue reading. “What do you mean?” he asked, still not looking up.

“Like, if someone you liked gave you flowers, how would you feel about it?”

His mom had loved flowers. She had loved planting them in the garden. She had loved it when his dad brought a bouquet home as a surprise. She had loved picking wildflowers with Stiles in the preserve.  

Now their garden hadn’t seen any new flowers in years, and Stiles didn’t know how he felt about them. After his mom’s funeral he swore he never wanted to see another flower arrangement again.

But coming from someone he liked? From Derek? If the flowers were coming from Derek, Stiles is pretty sure he would melt into the ground and become one with the flowers growing there. If Derek gave him flowers he would spontaneously combust and burn himself and the flowers and everything around them to the ground until all that was left was a pile of lovesick ash.

Instead of saying any of those things however, Stiles merely answered: “I don’t know.” He closed his book and looked up at Derek again.

“Who are you giving flowers to?” Stiles asked, heart thumping rapidly in his chest.

Derek blushed and looked away.

“No one,” he said. “I was just asking. What are you reading?”

***

“I’m pretty sure he has a girlfriend, so you can stop looking like a lovesick puppy.”

Stiles jumped, turning around in his seat to find Cora standing a few rows above him on the stands, watching him with a judgmental look on her face.

Stiles blushed and turned back around, purposefully keeping his eyes away from Derek where he was running around on the field. Cora sat down next to him.

“Who is she?” Stiles asked, trying not to feel hurt that Derek hadn’t told him he had a girlfriend. Stiles thought they were friends. At least kind of.

Beside him, Cora shrugged. “I don’t know. He hasn’t said anything. It’s just a feeling. Like, suddenly he’s spending a lot of time at the library, claiming to be studying. I’ve never known him to hang out at the library. And he’ll come home late, or skip dinners. He used to always tell me where he was going, and now he doesn’t anymore. It’s like he’s keeping a secret. Our family doesn’t do secrets.”

Stiles looked over at Cora to find her watching Derek. Following her line of vision Stiles found Derek watching them, an unreadable look on his face. It was almost as if he was listening to their conversation. Stiles lifted his hand in a small wave, and Derek looked away again.

“Anyway, my brother is the most emotionally constipated person I know. You can probably do better.”

***

Stiles started going out to the lake regularly after that first time. Usually, he’d meet Derek, as if he somehow knew when Stiles was going to be there.

They’d spend hours out there sometimes, talking, mostly about unimportant things. Stiles didn’t want to talk about his mother. Derek didn’t want to talk about his girlfriend. Neither of them wanted to talk about how close they were sitting.

One day, Stiles looked at Derek sitting next to him by the lake, and Stiles thought that, well, they belonged together. Like Derek was Stiles’ particular person.

Silently, Stiles sat next to Derek. He didn’t say anything. This wasn’t about fate. It wasn’t about destiny or soulmates or the supernatural. They just understood each other. All the way.

But Stiles was only fourteen. He had never kissed anyone, and Derek had a girlfriend. They were just connected. And somehow, they didn’t label it love.  

***

Derek was the first person Stiles kissed. It was the summer Stiles was fifteen, a few weeks after school ended. They were sitting by the lake again. They had spent the day with Cora and Laura, lounging around outside. Stiles had sat on the tire swing tied to the large tree on the lawn and Derek had pushed him. Cora and Laura had laughed at the way Stiles screamed when Derek pushed too hard. Afterwards, they left to go for a walk, while Laura and Cora stayed behind on the porch, making kissing noises as they disappeared into the trees.  

It was chilly, for summer.

“You’re cold,” Derek said, breaking the silence. “Let me give you my jacket.”

Stiles wasn’t really cold, but he let Derek give him his leather jacket anyway. It was warm with Derek’s body heat. Much too wide across the shoulders. Derek’s arms were bare now.

Stiles let himself look at Derek for a long time. Every curve of his face was familiar, and also, he had never seen him before.

Derek smiled. Shining. Bashful.

“I love you, Stiles. I mean it.”

Stiles leaned in and kissed him.

Derek touched his face. Ran his hand down his neck and along his collarbone. The light filtering through the trees shone down on them. Their kiss was electric and soft. And tentative and certain. Terrifying and exactly right.

Stiles felt the love rush from him to Derek and from Derek to him.

They were warm and shivering, and young and ancient, and alive.

Stiles was thinking, it’s true. We already love each other. We already do.

It wasn’t until Stiles was home that he noticed that he was still wearing Derek’s jacket.

***

About a month after their first kiss, late July of Stiles’ fifteenth summer, he went swimming at the lake. Alone.

Where was Derek?

Stiles doesn’t really know.

They had been spending a lot of time at the Hale house. He was probably there. Or he could have been with his girlfriend, who Stiles still didn’t know who was. Or he was somewhere with Laura or Cora. Stiles didn’t know.

In any case, Stiles went into the water wearing a T-shirt and boxers. Apparently he walked into the woods, to the lake, wearing nothing more. They never found any of his clothes on the ground. No towel either.

Why?

Again, he doesn’t really know.

He must have swum out too far. He must have gotten too tired to get back. He must have hit his head on something. He must have swallowed a lot of water.

Like he said, he doesn’t know.

He remembers only this: he plunged down into the water, down to the rocky bottom, and he could see the trees of the preserve and his arms and legs felt numb but his fingers were cold.

His father found him on the edge of the lake, curled into a ball and half underwater. He was shivering uncontrollably. Adults wrapped him in blankets. They tried to get him warm. They fed him tea and gave him clothes, but when he didn’t talk or stop shivering, they loaded him into an ambulance and brought him to the Beacon Hills hospital, where he stayed for several days as the doctors ran tests.

Hypothermia, respiratory problems, and most likely some kind of head injury, though the brain scans showed nothing.

His dad stayed by his side. He remembers the sad gray faces of Melissa and Scott. He remembers his lungs felt full of something, long after the doctors judged them clear. He remembers he felt like he’d never get warm again, even when they told him his body temperature was normal. His hands hurt. His feet hurt.

His dad brought him home to recuperate. He lay in bed in the dark and felt desperately sorry for himself. Because he was sick, and even more because Derek never called. He didn’t visit either.

Weren’t they in love?

Weren’t they?

Even though he probably had a girlfriend, Derek had said that he loved Stiles.

He wrote to Laura, two or three stupid, lovesick emails asking her to find out about Derek.

She had the good sense to ignore them.

Stiles stopped writing and deleted all the emails from his sent mail folder. They were weak and stupid.

The bottom line is, Derek bailed when he got hurt.

The bottom line is, it was only a meaningless fling.

The bottom line is, he might have loved his girlfriend.

Stiles never got an explanation. He just knows that Derek left him.

***

Welcome to Stiles’ skull.

A truck is rolling over the bones of his neck and head. The vertebrae break, the brains pop and ooze. A thousand flashlights shine in his eyes. The world tilts.

He throws up. He blacks out.

This happens all the time. It’s nothing but an ordinary day.

The pain started six weeks after his accident. Nobody was certain whether the two were related, but there was no denying the vomiting and weight loss and general horror.

His dad took him for MRIs and CT scans. Needles, machines. More needles, more machines. They tested him for brain tumors, meningitis, frontotemporal dementia. Stiles held his breath as the doctor told him they hadn’t found anything.

To relieve the pain, they prescribed this drug and that drug and another drug, because the first one didn’t work and the second one didn’t work, either. They gave him prescription after prescription without even knowing what was wrong. Just trying to quell the pain.

Stiles, said the doctors, don’t take too much.

Stiles, said the doctors, watch for signs of addiction.

And still, Stiles, be sure to take your meds.

There were so many appointments he can’t even remember them. Eventually the doctors came through with a diagnosis. Stiles Stilinski: post-traumatic headaches, also known as PTHA. Migraine headaches caused by traumatic brain injury.

He’ll be fine, they tell him.

He won’t die.

It’ll just hurt a lot.

***

***

Shortly after Stiles got home from the hospital, after all the tests and procedures were done, Stiles found himself alone in the bathroom. He clutched the edge of the sink, staring at himself in the mirror.

The only contrast to his pale skin were his dark eyes and the moles that dotted his face. There were bags under his eyes, from lack of sleep. His hair was long, soft. Beautiful, his mom had called him. Derek had said that too, Stiles thinks. Of course, he can’t really be sure of anything anymore. All he knew was that his mom was dead, and Derek hadn’t called.

Thinking about them made his heart hurt. He didn’t want to think about them. Not now.

He knew his dad was downstairs, probably sitting in the kitchen with a half full bottle of whiskey, or out on the porch, making secret phone calls he thought Stiles didn’t know about.

His hands shook when he reached for the drawer, pulling it open slowly while simultaneously listening for sounds of his dad. When he didn’t hear anything, he reached into the drawer and removed the hair clippers his mom used to keep his hair short with.

He’d let it grow out after she died, and his dad hadn’t said anything, but now it felt like it was time for a change. He plugged it into the wall and turned it on, taking one last look at himself in the mirror before raising the clippers to his hair and letting it fall down into the sink underneath him.

When he went downstairs later, the only reaction he got from his dad was a long sigh before pouring himself another glass of whiskey.

***

Once, Stiles asked his father how they could afford all the appointments and tests and prescriptions.

His dad told him not to worry about it.

***

More than once, Stiles asked his dad about the Hales.

His dad told him they had moved to New York. That they had left Beacon Hills. That they were having their house remodeled. That they might stay away for a long time.

That they might not come back.

Stiles tried not to show how much that hurt him.

Still, Derek didn’t call.

***  

The next summer – the summer Stiles is sixteen, his father insists on taking them away. They drive to Yellowstone and stay there for three weeks. His dad hasn’t had this much time off in years, and Stiles knows he should appreciate it.

The thing is, it’s kind of hard to be grateful when they keep having to stop so Stiles can vomit into rest stop toilets, feeling as if his brains are liquefying, seeping out of his ear.

He could hear his dad calling him, but he never answered until his medicine took effect.

At Yellowstone, he went to see Old Faithful with his dad. He pressed his face into the tiles of their bathroom floor. They went hiking. Stiles threw up behind a tree. He watched as his father tried to catch fish in the Yellowstone River. Migraines left his blood spreading across unfamiliar hotel sheets, dripping onto the floors, oozing into carpets, soaking through leftover sandwiches.

He missed Derek that summer.

But the year after his accident he missed days and even weeks of school. He failed his classes, and the principal informed him he would have to repeat junior year. He stopped going to lacrosse practice. He was too ill to drive. The friends he’d had weakened into acquaintances. All but Scott, of course, but Stiles could tell he often wanted to be elsewhere when they were together.

When his dad took him to Yellowstone, Stiles knew that the Hales – Derek – were off in New York having adventures without him. Stiles had never really fit in with them, he knew that, but it still hurt him that Derek had left without saying goodbye. Without visiting him in the hospital.

That he still hadn’t called.

***

Welcome, once again, to Beacon Hills and the beautiful Hale family, where nothing is as it seems.

The people of Beacon Hills believe in outdoor exercise. They believe that time heals. They believe, although they will not say so explicitly, that there is more going on in the woods than what meets the eye.

They do not discuss these matters in public. They do not believe in displays of distress.

Stiles knows how the people of Beacon Hills see him and his dad. The poor little family. The dead mother. The stressed out town sheriff.

The sickly son who doesn’t talk much. The people who know him at school tend to keep away.

Now he misses school half the time. When he’s there, his pale skin and watery eyes make him look glamorously tragic. Sometimes he falls down at school, crying. He frightens the other students. Even his best friend, Scott McCall, is getting tired of walking him to the nurse’s office.

Still, he has an aura of mystery that stops him from being teased or singled out for typical high school unpleasantness. The details of his accident are few and much talked about. His father is the sheriff. His mother is dead.

Of course, Stiles feels no sense of his own mystery eating a can of chicken soup late at night, or lying in the fluorescent light of the school nurse’s office. It is hardly glamorous; the life he is living now.

It is not glamorous that he can barely drive a car. It is not mysterious to be home on a Saturday night, reading a novel in a pile of blankets. However, he is not immune to the feeling of being viewed as a mystery.

It is a strange feeling; one he has felt ever since his mother died. One he fears he will never get used to or rid of.

The beautiful Hale family no longer live in Beacon Hills, but they haven’t been forgotten.  


	2. Beacon Hills

When Stiles was eight, his dad gave him a stack of fairytale books for Christmas. They came with colored covers: _The Yellow Fairy Book, The Blue Fairy Book, The Crimson, The Green, The Gray, The Brown_ and _The Orange_. Inside were tales from all over the world, variations on variations of familiar stories.

Read them and you hear echoes of one story inside another, then echoes of another inside that. So many have the same premise: once upon a time, there were three.

Three of something.

Three pigs, three bears, three brothers, three soldiers, three billy goats. Three princesses.

Since the accident, Stiles has been writing some of his own. Variations.

He has time on his hands, so let him tell you a story. A variation of a story you have heard before.

***

_Once upon a time there was a queen who had three beautiful children. As she grew old, she began to wonder which should inherit the kingdom, since none had married or had children._

_The queen decided to ask her children to demonstrate their love for her._

_To the eldest princess she said, “Tell me how you love me.”_

_She loved her as much as all the treasures in the kingdom._

_To the youngest princess she said, “Tell me how you love me.”_

_She loved her with the strength of iron._

_To the middle child, the prince, she said, “Tell me how you love me.”_

_The prince thought for a long time before answering. Finally, he said he loved her as meat loved salt._

_“Then you do not love me at all,” the queen said. She threw her son from the castle and had the bridge drawn up behind him so he could not return._

_Now, this prince goes into the forest with not so much as a coat or a loaf of bread. He wanders through a hard winter, taking shelter beneath trees. He arrives at an inn and gets hired as assistant to the cook. As the days and weeks go by, the prince learns the way of the kitchen. Eventually, he surpasses his employer in skill and his food is known throughout the land._

_Years pass, and the oldest princess comes to be married. For the festivities, the cook from the inn makes the wedding meal._

_Finally, a large roast pig is served. It is the queen’s favorite dish, but this time it has been cooked with no salt._

_The queen tastes it._

_Tastes it again._

_“Who would dare to serve such an ill-cooked roast at the future queen’s wedding?” she cries._

_The prince-cook appears before his mother, but he is so changed she does not recognize him. “I would not serve you salt, Your Majesty,” he explains. “For did you not exile your only son for saying that it was of value?”_

_At his words, the queen realizes that not only is he her son – he is, in fact, the child who loves her best._

_And what then?_

_The oldest and the youngest daughters have been living with the queen all this time. One has been in favor one week, the other the next. They have been driven apart by their mother’s constant comparisons. Now the only son has returned, the queen yanks the kingdom from her eldest, who has just been married._

_She is not to be queen after all. The sisters rage._

_At first, the prince basks in motherly love. Before long, however, he realizes the queen is old and angry. He is to be king, but he is also stuck tending to a crazy old tyrant for the rest of his days. He will not leave her, no matter how sick she becomes._

_Does he stay because he loves her as meat loves salt?_

_Or does he stay because she has now promised him the kingdom?_

_It is hard for him to tell the difference._

_***_

If you google _traumatic brain injury_ , most websites will tell you that selective amnesia is a consequence. When there’s damage to the brain, it’s not uncommon for a patient to forget stuff. He will be unable to piece together a coherent story of the trauma.

But Stiles doesn’t want people to know he’s like this. Still like this, after all the appointments and scans and medicines.

He doesn’t want to be labeled with a disability. He doesn’t want more drugs. He doesn’t want doctors or concerned teachers. He certainly doesn’t want any more needles. God knows, he’s had enough needles for a lifetime.

What he remembers from the time before the accident:

Falling in love with Derek at the lake in the woods. Letting Derek give him his jacket, even though he wasn’t really cold. Thinking about how Derek had a girlfriend. How they shouldn’t have kissed. Kissing Derek. Dinner at the Hale house. Hanging out with Laura and Cora.

The tire swing, the basement, the preserve.

He doesn’t remember much else.

He can see Cora’s hand, her chipped gold nail polish, holding a jug of gas for the cars.

Laura, being held by someone on the lawn outside the house.

Derek, holding onto a tree, his face lit by the glow of a bonfire.

There is so much he does not know.

He used to ask his dad when he didn’t remember the rest of the summer. His forgetfulness frightened him. He’d suggest stopping his meds, or trying new meds, or seeing a different physician. He’d beg to know what he’d forgotten. Then one day in late fall – the fall he spent undergoing tests for death-sentence illnesses – his father stopped him. “You ask me over and over. You never remember what I say.”

Stiles stared wide-eyed at his father. “I’m sorry,” he said.

He poured himself a glass of whiskey as he talked. “You began asking me the day you woke in the hospital. ‘What happened? What happened?’ I told you the truth, Stiles, I always did, and you’d repeat it back to me. But the next day you’d ask again.”

“I’m sorry,” he said again.

“You still ask me almost every day.”

It is true, Stiles has almost no memory of his accident. He doesn’t remember what happened before and after. He doesn’t remember his doctor’s visits. He knew what must have happened, because of course they happened – and here he is with a diagnosis and medications – but nearly all his medical treatment is a blank.

He looked at his dad. At his infuriatingly concerned face, his wet eyes, the tipsy slackness of his mouth. “You have to stop asking,” he said, looking away. “The doctors think it’s better if you remember on your own, anyway.”

Stiles made him tell him one last time, and he wrote down his answers so he could look back at them when he wanted to. That’s why he knows about the night-swimming accident, the lake, the hypothermia, respiratory difficulty, and the unconfirmed traumatic brain injury.

He never asked his father again. There’s a lot he doesn’t understand, but this way he stays pretty sober. And while he wants to know what happened, he wants to protect his dad more.

***

Ever since the accident, Stiles hasn’t been allowed into the preserve. His dad explicitly told him he couldn’t, not even after he finally got his license. Not that he had the energy to do much driving, anyway.

He’s not allowed at the Hale house either.

But still. He’s not allowed in the woods. He barely makes it to school most days. Scott comes over when he can, but Stiles can’t imagine he’s really all that fun to hang around when Scott has an entire lacrosse team to choose from.

The next summer, his dad wants to take him away again. On another road trip. Somewhere far away from Beacon Hills.

But Stiles doesn’t want to. He wants to stay home and spend time alone and finally go out to the preserve again. And despite what he tells his dad, he wants to see the house.

He wants to go back to the lake. He wants to remember what happened that summer.

He wants to know why Derek disappeared. He doesn’t know why Derek wasn’t with him, swimming. He wants to know why he went to the lake alone. Why he swam in his T-shirt and boxers and left no clothes on the ground. And why Derek bailed when he got hurt.

Stiles wonders if Derek loved him. If he loved his girlfriend.

His father and Stiles are supposed to leave in five days.

Stiles should never have agreed to go.

He argues with his dad. He yells. He promises. He begs.

He’ll be sick if he goes. His headaches will explode. He shouldn’t go on a long car-trip. He shouldn’t eat at strange road-side diners. What if they lose his medication?

***

_Once upon a time, there was a king who had three beautiful daughters. He loved each of them dearly. One day, when the young ladies were of age to be married, a terrible, three-headed wolf laid siege to the kingdom, tearing through villages with sharp teeth. It killed babies, old people, and everyone in between._

_The king promised a princess’ hand in marriage to whoever slayed the wolf. Heroes and warriors came in suits of armor, riding brave horses and bearing swords and arrows._

_One by one, these men were slaughtered and eaten._

_Finally, the king reasoned that a maiden might melt the wolf’s heart and succeed where warriors had failed. He sent his eldest daughter to beg the wolf for mercy, but the wolf listened to not a word of her pleas. It swallowed her whole._

_Then the king sent his second daughter to beg the wolf for mercy, but the wolf did the same. Swallowed her before she could get a word out._

_The king then sent his youngest daughter to beg the wolf for mercy, and she was so lovely and clever that he was sure she would succeed where the others had perished._

_No indeed. The wolf simply ate her._

_The king was left aching with regret. He was now alone in the world._

_Now, let me ask you this. Who killed the girls?_

_The wolf? Or their father?_

_***_

Eventually they decide Stiles will stay home. His father will go back to work, but he still wants to spend time with him. He will not lose the entire summer with Stiles. He insists.

After their talk, his dad goes outside and has long private conversations on the phone. Stiles doesn’t know who he’s talking to, but he assumes it’s Melissa. Or the doctors. Or someone else with way too much knowledge of Stiles’ medical history.

Stiles can’t hear anything except a few phrases: Stiles is so fragile, needs lots of rest. They’ll stay home instead, spend the summer together in Beacon Hills. Nothing should disturb him, the healing is very gradual.


	3. Summer Seventeen

On one of Stiles’ rare good days, he takes his mom’s powder blue jeep out of the garage and drives towards the preserve. He has his backpack full of pills slung in the passenger seat, phone fully charged in his pocket.

If all goes well, his father won’t have to know this trip ever took place, but he’d very much like to have some way of getting in touch with him if something happens.

As he drives deeper into the preserve, trees surrounding him on both sides of the dirt road, he finds himself looking forward to seeing the Hale house again. As he turns and passes a thick patch of trees he cranes his neck to look for its friendly turret – but it isn’t there.

The trees that used to shade the big, sloping yard – they’re gone, too. Instead of the Victorian six-bedroom with the wraparound porch and the farmhouse kitchen, instead of the house where the Hales had lived since forever, he sees a sleek modern building perched on rocky ground. There’s a Japanese garden on one side, bare rock on the other. The house is glass and iron. Cold.

Stiles kills the engine and steps out of the car. He stares at the new building. He knew the Hales were renovating, of course. His dad had told him.

He just hadn’t realized they’d torn the house down. That the lawn was mostly gone. And the trees, especially the huge old maple with the tire swing beneath it. That tree must have been a hundred years old.

Air blows up around him, dark grey, seeping from the trees like a cloud. It arches over him. The muscles of his neck spasms, his throat catches. He folds beneath the weight of it. The blood rushes to his head. He is suffocating.

It all seems so sad, so unbearably sad for a second, to think of the lovely old maple with the swing. He never told the tree how much he loved it. They never gave it a name, never did anything for it. It could have lived so much longer.

He is so, so cold.

He tells himself to stop. To be normal. 

Because he is. Because he can be.

Okay. Okay. It was just a tree.

Just a tree with a tire swing that he loved a lot. That he knows Derek loved a lot.

He takes deep breaths, like he’d been taught after his mother died. Breathe in. Hold. Breathe out. Repeat. Don’t have a panic attack. Not now. Not here.

He calms down eventually, just as he always does.  

Once he can breathe again, he gets back in his jeep and drives back home. If his dad suspects anything during dinner that night, he doesn’t mention it.

Stiles takes his medication and tries to sleep even though his head is split open at the seams, his brain oozing out onto his pillow.

***

He stays away for weeks. He stays in bed. He reads. He hangs out with his dad whenever he isn’t working. He goes for walks when he can bear it. When his head isn’t growling like an angry wolf in his ear, threatening to rip his throat out with its teeth.

But his curiosity is only sated for so long. One night, over a plate of microwaved pizza from the night before, Stiles asks his dad if he thinks the Hales are coming back. He knows he swore not to ask anymore, but he can’t hold the question back.

His dad freezes, his slice of pizza halfway to his mouth. He sets it back on the plate and carefully wipes his hands with the napkins Stiles had put out.

He’s silent for a long time.

“I don’t know,” he says finally, keeping his voice carefully even as he speaks. “They might not.”

“But aren’t they renovating their house?” Stiles pushes. “Why would they renovate if they weren’t coming back?”

His dad looks uncomfortable with the question.

“I don’t know, son,” he repeats. “They might want to sell it.”

Stiles doesn’t ask any more questions that night, but he can’t imagine anyone else living in that large house in the woods. Even if it’s not the same house as it used to be.  

***

A few days later, when his dad has left for the day, Stiles once more takes the Jeep out of the garage, driving towards the preserve.

He parks his car outside the new Hale house – he doesn’t think that house will ever stop looking wrong to him – and starts walking.

He doesn’t stop until he reaches the clearing with the lake. The water looks clear and inviting, the sun’s beams bouncing off the surface, creating patterns.

The bushes are bigger than he remembers them, wilder, growing onto the narrow path. As if no one has been there for years. They probably haven’t.

He sits down on a rock by the edge of the water and takes off his shoes and socks like he did that first day Derek found him. Like he did countless times before his mom died. He dips his feet in the cool water and leans back on his hands, eyes closed.

He stays for what feels like hours, until the sun loses its warmth and starts disappearing down towards the horizon.

No one finds him there.

Eventually, he gets up and puts his shoes back on. He knows he needs to get back, before his dad does and finds him gone.

He gives the lake one last lingering look before heading back to the house where his car is parked.

He keeps coming back, walking around the preserve, sitting at the lake, exploring the new Japanese garden and the outside of the new Hale house. He doesn’t understand why they would want any of this when their old house was so beautiful. He wants to ask, but there’s no one to give him any answers. The Hales are gone.

Until one day they aren’t.

***

Stiles drives up as usual, expecting to see the same, brand new, cold house he’s slowly gotten used to seeing. It’s still there, standing tall and new and beautiful in a way with all its glass and metal. But a car is parked in front of it.

A small, red sports car, shiny and bright. A car he hasn’t seen since before his accident. Laura’s car.

Stiles turns the car off and all but throws himself out the door towards the house, where he sees now that a few lights are on, shining through the windows.

He knocks on the door, knuckles hurting against the hard wood. He waits impatiently, listening for the footsteps that are slowly approaching.

The door opens without a sound, and before him stands Laura. She looks the same. Her long, thick hair is piled messily on top of her head and she’s wearing a loose T-shirt and soft looking blue jeans.

“Stiles,” she says, surprised. “Your dad told me you weren’t allowed out here.”

Stiles looks down, face warming. “He doesn’t know,” he said, looking up at Laura’s questioning face. “I’m not supposed to be here. But it helps, I think. Staying away sure as hell wasn’t doing me any good.”

Laura holds his gaze, as if searching for something in his golden eyes. Finally, she looks away and opens the door. “Okay,” she says. “Come in. I won’t tell your dad you were here.”

Stiles nods and steps inside. “Thank you,” he says.

The inside of the new Hale house is just as different as the outside. The walls are bare. Where there once hung heaps of family pictures, now there is nothing. Just white walls.

Laura catches him looking and grimaces. “It’s not what it used to be, I know. But we all wanted something different.”

“Yeah,” Stiles agrees with a nod. “It’s very different.”

Laura leads them into the new kitchen. It’s sleek and modern, black kitchen cabinets lining the walls, a grey stone island in the middle of the room, black bar stools surrounding it.

She gestures for Stiles to take a seat, and Stiles sits down on one side of the island.

“Do you want anything?” Laura asks, opening a cabinet. “Tea? Coffee? There’s not really much food in the house if I’m being honest.”

“I’m fine, thanks,” Stiles says. She closes the cabinet again and sits down on the other side of Stiles.

“Are the others coming back, too?” Stiles asks, trying not to sound too hopeful.

Laura purses her lips, staring silently at him. “How much do you remember of the accident?” is what she finally asks.

Stiles bites his lip. He shrugs. “I’ve been told they found me by the lake. I don’t know how I got there or why I was alone. I don’t really remember much.”

Laura nods. “I don’t know if anyone else is coming back,” she admits.

Stiles nods, trying not to let the disappointment show on his face.

Stiles has so many questions he wants to ask. How is Derek doing? Why did you leave? What happened to the house? Why was he alone the night of the accident? Where was Derek?

What he finally ends up with is: “Can you tell me what happened that night?”

Laura looks pained at the question. “Your dad asked me not to,” she says. “He says you need to remember on your own.”

Stiles scowls down at his hands. He wonders if it matters to her that he can’t hold on to even basic facts surrounding his accident. He’s lost so much of what they all did together the summer he was fifteen.

He doesn’t want her to look at him like he’s sick. Or like his mind isn’t working. He doesn’t want her to tell Derek what a fuck-up he’s become.

“Tell me about college,” Laura says. “Where are you going?”

“Nowhere, yet,” he says. This truth he can’t avoid. He is surprised the sheriff hasn’t told her already.

“What?” she asks, frowning. “Why?”

“I didn’t graduate,” Stiles says. “I missed too much school after the accident.”

“That’s horrible,” Laura says, looking genuinely sympathetic. “Can’t you do summer school?”

Stiles shrugs. “Apparently not. Besides, I’ll do better if I apply with all my coursework done.”

“What are you going to study?”

“Can we talk about something else?” he asks, not answering her question. Because he doesn’t know. He has no clue.

“How long are you in town for?” Stiles asks.

She shrugs. “I don’t know.”

Stiles nods.

“I better get going before my dad gets home,” he says. “He’s been working long hours on some new case he won’t talk about, but I don’t want to risk it.”

Laura walks him to the door.

“It was nice seeing you, Stiles,” she says, holding the door open for him. Stiles walks outside.

Just as she’s about to shut the door behind him he turns and speaks again. “Laura?”

She stops, opens the door again and looks at him. “Yes?” she asks.

Stiles swallows heavily. “How’s Derek?”

She smiles softly at him. “He’s okay,” she says, an edge of _something_ in her voice that Stiles can’t quite decipher. Like she knows something he doesn’t.

***

Stiles avoids the Hale house after that. The few days he feels well enough to go out, he takes a different route out to the preserve. Or he goes to the library. Or he stays home anyway.

He doesn’t see Laura again, doesn’t know if she’s still here. He doesn’t think about their conversation. He doesn’t think about Cora, or Derek, or any of the Hales. Or, he tries not to.

He fails mostly.

***

Cleaning out his desk drawers one day, he finds a pad of paper left over from years ago. He gets a pen and writes down all his memories from the summer he was fifteen.

Derek’s jacket, the tire swing. The lake, the kiss.

The dinners at the Hale house.

Cora’s hand, her chipped gold nail polish, holding a jug of gas for the cars.

Laura, being held by someone on the lawn outside the house.

Derek, holding onto a tree, his face lit by the glow of a bonfire.

And all four of them, laughing so hard they felt dizzy and sick.

He makes a separate page for the accident itself. What his dad told him and what he guesses. He must have gone swimming at the lake alone. He hit his head. He swum out too far. He got tired. He swallowed a lot of water. His father found him and the adults gave him tea.

He was diagnosed with hypothermia, respiratory problems, and a brain injury that never showed up in the scans.

He tacks the pages to the wall above his bed. He adds sticky notes with questions.

Why did he go into the water alone at night?

Where were his clothes?

Did he really have a head injury from the swim, or did something else happen? Could someone have hit him earlier? Was he the victim of some crime?

And what happened between him and Derek? Did they argue? Did Stiles say something to him?

Did he stop loving him and go back to his girlfriend?

Stiles resolves that everything he learns this summer will go above his bed. He will sleep beneath the notes and study them every morning.

Maybe a picture will emerge.

***

A witch has been standing there behind him for some time, waiting for a moment of weakness. She holds an ivory statue of a wolf. It is intricately carved. Stiles turns and admires it only for a moment before she swings it with shocking force. It connects, crushing a hole in his forehead. He can feel his bone come loose. The woman swings the statue again and hits above his right ear, smashing his skull. Blow after blow she lands, until tiny flakes of bone litter the bed and mingle with chipped bits of the once-beautiful wolf.

He finds his pills and turns off the light.

***

Stiles is out in the preserve again. It’s a sunny day, but the trees block out a lot of the sunlight, so the light is dim. Stiles walks slowly through the woods, taking in the woodsy smell he used to love. The trees he used to walk through for hours.

The places he used to go with his mom, and then, later, with Derek.

There’s the sound of a twig breaking somewhere behind him, and Stiles turns to look. The trees aren’t too dense here, but still, he can’t see anyone. He’s just considering whether or not he should go investigate, when someone steps out from the trees behind him.

“Stiles?”

Stiles turns and sees Laura, staring at him. She’s breathing heavily, like she’s been running. There’s sweat running down one side of her face, and her sneakers look dirty. She looks pale and tired, like she’s been sick.

“What are you doing out here?” she asks, stepping closer. Her eyes dart quickly to something behind him before going back to his face. Stiles starts turning to look behind him but Laura grabs his shoulder to get his attention.

Stiles shrugs, lifting his shoulder against the weight of Laura’s hand. “I just wanted to go for a walk. I’ve always loved this place,” he says softly.

She grimaces. “I don’t know if this is the safest place for you to be walking around alone,” she says.

Stiles feels anger boil up inside him, suddenly, like a dark wave threatening to drown him. He takes a step back, twisting until Laura’s hand drops from his shoulder, dropping to rest against her side instead.

“I’m not an invalid. I can take care of myself. Just because I get headaches it doesn’t mean I need your pity.”

He turns and starts to walk away from her, and for a second he swears he sees a shadow lurking in the trees ahead. But then Laura’s hand is on him again and she’s turning him around.

“No,” she says harshly, holding on tightly to his shoulders. “Let me walk you back to your car. I don’t mean to pity you. I don’t think you can’t take care of yourself. It’s just, Stiles, if something happened to you out here, again, I don’t think I’d be able to forgive myself. Not again. And I know Derek wouldn’t be able to forgive me for it.”

Stiles scoffs and shrugs off Laura’s hand again, but he follows her through the woods. “I seriously doubt that Derek would care,” he says, and tries not to let his voice reveal how much the thought of that hurts.

From the corner of his eye he can see Laura frowning. “Derek cares a lot about you,” she says, and she sounds so sincere Stiles wants to cry.

He shakes his head.

“If he cares so much, where was he after my accident? Why hasn’t he called, once, in two years? Why isn’t he here, like you are?”

Laura doesn’t say anything until they get to the place where Stiles parked his jeep.

Stiles is just unlocking it and getting in when Laura speaks again. “He misses you, Stiles, I promise you that. But he’s dealing with a lot of stuff right now.”  

Stiles gets into the car and slams the door shut. “Well that’s a shitty excuse to not send a fucking ‘get well soon’ card.”

He turns the key in the ignition and reverses out onto the road. He watches Laura in the rearview mirror, getting smaller and smaller, until finally he can’t see her at all.

***

His dad comes into his room that night and sits down in Stiles’ desk chair. Stiles is on his side, facing his dad, waiting for the drugs to knit his head back together.

“Son?”

Stiles’ eyes are closed tightly against the pain, but he nods slowly to show that he’s listening.

“I need to ask you something, and I need you to answer me honestly, okay?” 

Stiles nods again.

He hears his dad take a deep breath before speaking, the chair creaking under his weight as he moves.

“Have you been out in the preserve lately?”

Stiles opens his eyes at that, blinking against the blinding pain still splitting through his head.

“What?” Stiles asks, trying not to look guilty. Though, he’s not sure his dad could find any guilt in his expression with the way his face is grimacing against the pain.

His dad looks guilty just asking, and just that kind of makes Stiles want to come clean.

“I know you’re tired a lot and that you usually stay home, but there have been reports of a large animal spotted in the preserve, and I just want to make sure you haven’t been out there.”

Stiles nods, swallowing. “I haven’t,” he says softly, his stomach twisting, joining the pain of his slowly receding migraine.

His dad studies his face intently for a few seconds before nodding. “I believe you, son,” he says. “I’m sorry, but I had to ask.”

Stiles nods. “I understand,” he says, closing his eyes again.

“How are you feeling? Are the medicine working?” his dad asks, changing the topic. He must know that the worst of the pain is over, or Stiles wouldn’t be able to speak as clearly as he was.

He nods again, cheek rubbing against the soft sheets covering his bed. “It’s almost gone,” he says, and he hears his dad get up.

Before he leaves his room, he stops by the bed and pulls the covers up until they’re covering Stiles’ shoulders.

He hums in thanks, moving until his head is resting on his pillow. His dad shuts the lights off on his way out, and when the door closes, Stiles slowly drifts off, their conversation fresh in his mind.

***

He’s running through the preserve. It’s dark, and there’s something chasing him, but he can’t see anything when he turns to look.

He just knows that he can’t stop running, or something terrible will happen.

He runs, and runs, until it feels like his lungs are going to explode, until his feet hurt with every step, but he can’t stop. He has to keep running.

Behind him, he hears thunderous footsteps approaching. Whatever’s chasing him is catching up. Fast. It’s panting heavily, and Stiles swears he can feel the breath on the back of his neck.

Still, when he turns around, there’s nothing.

And then his foot gets tangled up in something. He comes crashing down to the forest floor, hitting it heavily, hands scraping against rocks and roots, pain shooting through him.

He turns over on his back and starts crawling backwards. And then he sees it. The enormous, hulking shape of a _thing_. If Stiles didn’t know better, he’d say it looked like a wolf, but he knows that wolves don’t get that big.

Still, it’s stalking towards where he’s desperately scrambling away, and in three huge strides it’s above him. It opens its mouth and bites down, crushing Stiles’ head in its powerful jaws.

***

Stiles wakes up in a pool of sweat, head screaming in pain.

He doesn’t leave his bed that day.

***

It’s raining. Perhaps that should have been Stiles’ first clue that something was wrong. The fact that his dad’s shift should have ended an hour ago, and he still wasn’t home should have been the second.

Stiles is in the living room, wearing pajama pants and a soft t-shirt, watching some random sitcom when his phone rings. It’s his dad’s number.

“Hello?” he says, holding the phone up to his ear.

“Hi, son,” his dad says. He sounds tired. “Listen, I probably won’t be home for at least a few hours. Some hikers were out in the woods today and they found something that we’ve got to go check out. Just – Just stay in the house, okay? I’ll call you when I can.”

“Uh, okay,” Stiles answers slowly. “Is everything okay?”

His dad sighs heavily on the other end. “I don’t know, son. I hope so.”

There’s a short silence, and then his dad continues. “I have to go,” he says.

“Okay,” Stiles says. “Goodbye. Stay safe.”

“I will,” his dad promises, and then he hangs up.

Stiles puts the phone down next to him on the couch and goes back to watching TV, trying to keep the gnawing fear that something is terribly wrong out of his mind.

He makes a quick dinner, puts his dishes in the dishwasher and goes upstairs to take a shower. He’s just exiting the shower when he hears the front door slam shut.

He quickly dresses in the same pair of pajama pants as before and a fresh shirt and goes downstairs.

His dad looks about ready to pass out from exhaustion.

“Dad?” Stiles says cautiously, walking down the last few steps until he’s in the living room, staring at where his dad is leaning heavily against the front door.

He opens his eyes and straightens up, smiling tiredly at Stiles. “Hey, son,” he says, pulling his jacket off and hanging it up. It’s dripping water all over the floor, but his dad doesn’t seem to notice.

Once his boots are off, Stiles steps forwards and helps his dad over to the couch. His dad sits down heavily, sighing into his hands.

“Are you okay, dad?” Stiles asks, hovering a few steps away from the couch.

His dad looks up. “I get to do some very good things in my line of work,” he says slowly. “But sometimes, I wonder if it’s worth it.”

Stiles frowns. “What was it you found out there tonight?”

His dad shakes his head. “I don’t think I should tell you that, Stiles,” he says.

Stiles doesn’t protest. Not with the way his dad is acting right now. “Is there anything I can get you?” he asks, and his dad shakes his head again.

“No,” he says. “I think I just need to go to sleep.” He gets up from the couch and heads over to the staircase, beginning to climb it slowly, leaving Stiles to stand in the living room, staring after him.

Only when his dad is upstairs and Stiles can hear him walking around in his bedroom does Stiles move and go to his own room.

It takes him hours to fall asleep, and when he does, he dreams of the dark trees of the preserve.

***

The next day, his dad leaves before Stiles wakes up. When he goes downstairs there’s a note on the fridge.

‘Stay home today. I’ll call you when I can. Love, Dad’

Leaving the incredibly cryptic note hanging on the fridge, Stiles grabs a yogurt and heads into the living room to watch TV again.

A few hours later, his dad calls.

“Hello?” Stiles answers.

“What have you been up to today?” he asks.

“Not much,” Stiles replies. “Ate some yogurt. Been watching TV, mostly. Why?”

“Just wondering. Did you take your meds?”

Stiles rolls his eyes. “Yes, dad, I took my meds this morning. Like I do every morning.”

“How’s your head?” his dad asks, ignoring the sarcasm in Stiles’ answer.

“It’s fine, I guess. Haven’t been crippled by pain yet today, so that’s always a win.”

“Good,” his dad says, and Stiles imagines him nodding on the other end. “I’ll call back in a few hours.”

“Okay,” Stiles says. “Bye, dad.”

He still has no idea what his dad was doing the night before.

***

The next few days are quiet. He spends time in bed, reading or writing or on his laptop. He spends time in the living room playing video games, but looking at the TV for too long makes his head hurt.

He goes to the library and borrows books. He reads them, then goes back to borrow more books. He stays away from the preserve, and he doesn’t see Laura again. He keeps thinking about that shiny new house in the middle of the woods, but he doesn’t go there again, the conversation with his dad still fresh in his mind.

He hadn’t noticed anything the last time he’d been out there, though Laura had seemed nervous when they talked together. Somehow, it feels like there’s something he should be remembering. Like there’s something missing.

Of course, that’s a feeling he’s gotten used to. Still, it bothers him.

***

“Stiles?”

Stiles turns around and comes face to face with Cora. He’s standing outside the Hale house again, having ignored his father’s warnings. He figures it can’t hurt. There are people living here now, so no animal in their right mind will dare to come close to the house.

“Cora?” Stiles asks incredulously.

She nods. “What are you doing here?” she asks curiously, head tilting to one side. Behind him, Stiles hears the door open. He turns and sees Laura walking towards them. Stiles turns back to look at Cora.

“What am _I_ doing here? What are _you_ doing here? Aren’t you supposed to be in New York?”

She shrugs. “I came back.”

So now both Laura and Cora are back? Stiles tries not to feel too hopeful that this means the other Hales will come back soon too. Especially one Hale in particular.

“Are – Are the others coming back too?” Stiles asks cautiously. He knows he asked Laura something similar, but she had told him Cora wasn’t coming back, and that had been wrong.

She looks sympathetic, like she knows who he’s really thinking about. She shrugs again. “I don’t know. I hope so. It would be nice to be more than just Laura and me around here.”

She pauses and appears to look him up and down. “You’re so tall,” she says, awed. “You didn’t used to be that tall, did you, Stiles?”

Stiles rolls his eyes. “It’s called growing,” he says. “Don’t hold me responsible.”

Two summers ago, Stiles and Cora were about even. Now Stiles is several inches taller.

“I’m all for growing,” Laura interjects. “Just don’t get taller than me.”

“Derek always lets me be the tallest,” she continues. “Never makes an issue of it.”

Stiles smiles sadly at the mention of Derek. Laura seems to have caught her mistake and is looking sheepish.

“He’s still our Stiles,” Cora says, changing the subject. “We probably look different to him, too.”

But they don’t. They look the same. Laura looks more or less just like her old self. Her ready smile, her bright laughter.

And Cora. Cora in a worn green T-shirt from two summers ago. Her dark hair pulled back in a ponytail. Bright eyes wide and alert, taking in their surroundings.

It is reassuring.

They talk for a bit more before Stiles has to get going. He hugs them both and gets into his jeep.

“You’re not going away again, right?” he asks through the open window.

Laura smiles and Cora shakes her head. “We’ll stick around for a while,” she says, and Stiles nods. “For as long as you need us.”

“Okay, I’ll see you around, I guess.”

He drives home, feeling better than he has in weeks. Like there is finally hope.

***

“I have a boyfriend in New York,” Laura says one day. They’re sitting on the hood of Stiles’ jeep, watching the sun move across the sky above them. “His name is Drake Loggerhead. He’s going to NYU like I am. We’ve had sexual intercourse quite a number of times, but always with protection. He brings me yellow roses every week and has nice muscles.”

Stiles smiles to keep himself from laughing. “Drake Loggerhead?” he asks, grinning.

“Yes,” Laura says. “What’s so funny?”

“Nothing,” Stiles shakes his head.

“We’ve been going out for five months,” she continues eagerly. “He’s spending the summer doing Outward Bound, so he’ll have even more muscles when I see him next!”

“You’ve got to be kidding,” Stiles laughs.

“Just a little,” Laura says, smiling. “But I love him.”

Stiles squeezes her hand. He is happy she has someone to be in love with.

***

There’s a night he remembers now. It must have been about two weeks before his accident. Early July. They were all sitting at the long table on the Hale house lawn. Candles burned on the porch. They were eating burgers. There was a salad of yellow tomatoes and a casserole of zucchini with a crust of Parmesan cheese. Derek pressed his leg against Stiles’ under the table. He felt light-headed with happiness.

Until Talia started talking. She was sitting on the other side of Derek, at the head of the table. “Derek,” she said, and Derek quickly removed his leg from Stiles’. Stiles tried not to be bothered by it. “I’ve noticed you’ve spent a lot of time away from home lately. Going to the library. Hanging out with your friends. Except I know for a fact that both Erica Reyes and Vernon Boyd are away for the summer, and the library closes at five every day. So, do you want to tell me where you’ve really been going?”

Talia’s voice never leaves any room for argument, but Stiles feels Derek tensing beside him, as if bracing himself for a conflict. “I have other friends than Erica and Boyd,” he insists.

Stiles doesn’t want to get involved, but he can’t help but notice how Talia’s eyes flicker quickly between them before landing on Derek again.

“Okay,” she says, and goes back to eating.

That’s not the end of the conversation, Stiles knows, but he tries to feel relieved that he won’t have to witness a family argument.

He finds it kind of strange that Talia doesn’t know about Derek’s girlfriend though. Cora seemed to know, even if she didn’t know who it was. Like Cora had said, the Hales didn’t keep secrets from each other.

***

Stiles is at the Hale house again, playing scrabble with Laura and Cora. Stiles is contemplating his letters, staring intently at them like suddenly a word will jump out at him. They’re silent, for the most part, the sound of shuffling pieces breaking the silence.

Stiles looks around the mostly empty living room, and his eyes fall on something he hasn’t seen before. It’s a white wooden sign, hanging on the wall. In black, flowing text it says: ‘Treasure every moment’. “Where did that come from?” Stiles asks, nodding towards the wall.

Cora looks up and snorts, shaking her head. “It’s something Laura put up,” she says, rolling her eyes.

“Hey,” Laura exclaims, mock glaring and Cora. “I like the idea of a motto,” she says. “I think an inspirational quote can get you through hard times.”

“Like what?” Stiles asks.

Laura pauses. Then she says, softly: “Be a little kinder than you have to be.”

They are all silenced by that. It seems impossible to argue with.

“Cheer up, the worst is yet to come,” Cora says.

“That’s a bit dark, don’t you think?” Stiles asks, laughing.

She shrugs, grinning.

“Don’t eat yellow snow,” Cora continues. “That’s another good one.” They laugh.

“Always do what you are afraid to do,” Stiles says. “That’s mine.”

“Oh, please. Who the hell says that?” Laura asks.

“Emerson,” Stiles answers. “I think.”

“Emerson is so boring,” Cora says, rolling her eyes.

“Stiles, I’m serious,” Laura says. “We should _not_ always do what we are afraid to do. We never should.”

“Why not?” Stiles asks.

“You could die. You could get hurt. If you are terrified there is probably a good reason. You should trust your impulses.”

“So what’s your philosophy, then?” Cora asks. “Be a giant chickenhead?”

“Yes,” Laura says, smiling. “That and the kindness thing I said before.”

***

_Once upon a time there was a queen who had three beautiful children. The two girls grew up as lovely as the day was long, and they made grand marriages, too. The third child, however, was so very, very tiny that his mother took to keeping him in a pocket, where the boy went unnoticed. Eventually, more normal-sized children and grandchildren arrived and the queen and her king forgot the existence of the tiny prince almost completely._

_When the too-small prince grew older, he passed most of his days and nights hardly ever leaving his tiny bed. There was very little reason for him to get up, so solitary was he._

_One day, he ventured to the palace library and was delighted to find what good company books could be. He began going there often. One morning, as he read, a mouse appeared on the table. He stood upright and wore a small velvet jacket. His whiskers were clean and his fur was brown. “You read just as I do,” he said, “walking back and forth across the pages.” He stepped forward and made a low bow._

_The mouse charmed the tiny prince with stories of his adventures. He told him of men who transform into wolves on the full moon and hunters who kill innocent children. He asked questions about the universe and searched continually for answers. In turn, the prince told the mouse fairy tales, wrote him stories, and went for walks showing him the palace gardens. He laughed and argued with him. He felt awake for the first time in his life._

_It was not long before they loved each other dearly._

_When he presented his suitor to his family, however, the prince met with difficulty. “He is only a mouse!” cried the king in disdain, while the queen screamed and ran from the throne room in fear. Indeed, the entire kingdom, from royalty to servants, viewed the mouse suitor with suspicion and discomfort. “He is unnatural,” people said of him. “An animal masquerading as a person.”_

_The tiny prince did not hesitate. He and the mouse left the palace and traveled far, far away. In a foreign land they were married, made a home for themselves, filled it with books and chocolate, and lived happily ever after._

_If you want to live where people are not afraid of mice, you must give up living in palaces._

***

A giant wields a rusty saw. He gloats and hums as he works, slicing through Stiles’ forehead and into the mind behind it.

He has less than four weeks to find the truth. Before school starts again.

Laura and Cora are alone at the shiny new mansion out in the woods.

Derek is in New York.

Stiles’ dad works all the time.

It’s been two years, and Derek still hasn’t called.

It’s been two years, and Stiles still doesn’t know what happened that night.

Still, no one will tell him.

He takes pills. Drinks water. The room is dark.

His dad stands in the doorway when he’s not at work, watching. Stiles doesn’t talk to him.

He’s in bed for two days. Every now and then the sharp pain wanes to an ache. Then, if he is alone, he sits up and writes on the cluster of notes above his bed. Questions more than answers.

The morning he feels better his dad has the day off. “I’m going into town,” he says. “You want to come? If you don’t mind your old man’s company.”

Stiles gets dressed and has breakfast with his dad. They walk around town for a while. His dad offers to buy him some new books but Stiles declines.

It’s nice.

Stiles wants more days like that.

***

On the way home, a memory comes.

The summer he was fifteen, a morning in early July. Peter was making espresso in the Hale house kitchen. Stiles was eating jam and baguette toast at the table. It was just the two of them.

“I love that wolf,” Stiles said, pointing. A cream wolf statue sat on the sideboard.

“It’s been there since Cora was three,” Peter said. “That’s the year me and Carrie took that trip to China.” He chuckled. “We bought a lot of art there. We had a guide, an art specialist.”

He sat down with his espresso. “This art specialist girl took us to antiques shops and helped us navigate the auction houses,” he said. “She spoke four languages. You wouldn’t think to look at her. Little slip of a China girl.”

“Don’t say China girl,” Stiles said, frowning.

Peter ignored him. “Carrie bought jewelry and had the idea of buying animal sculptures for the house.”

“Isn’t ivory illegal?” Stiles asked.

Peter nodded. “Oh, some places. But you can get it.”

“Is it elephant tusks?”

“That or rhino.”

You can get it, Peter said, about the ivory.

Stiles walked over and picked up the wolf. “People shouldn’t buy ivory,” he said. “It’s illegal for a reason.”

Peter rolled his eyes and kept drinking his coffee.

Stiles had the urge to snatch the wolf and fling it across the room. Would it break when it hit the fireplace? Would it shatter?

He put the wolf down again and balled his hands into fists. 

***

Summer fifteen, Cora and Stiles and Laura sat next to each other on a bench outside their favorite diner. They were waiting for Derek, who had insisted on stopping by the bookshop before they went to eat.

They had been waiting for a while when finally, Derek exited the shop down the street. He had a stack of books under his arm and started walking towards them.

He stopped in front of them and pulled out the book on the bottom and presented it to Stiles. Stiles took it and opened the book to the title page. It was inscribed. _For Stiles with everything, everything. Derek._

***

“I remember waiting for Derek outside the diner downtown,” Stiles tells Laura. She has stopped talking now and looks at him expectantly. “Derek gave me a book.”

“So your memories are coming back,” Laura says. “That’s great!”

“Talia asked Derek about his girlfriend.”

Laura shrugs. “A few times, yeah.”

“Tell me something,” Stiles says.

“What?”

“Why did Derek disappear after my accident?”

Laura twists a strand of her hair. “I don’t know.”

“Did he go to New York with his girlfriend?”

“I don’t know.”

“Did we fight? Did I do something wrong?”

“I don’t _know,_ Stiles.”

Suddenly, Laura starts choking. Gagging, like she might vomit. Bending over at the waist, her skin damp and pale.

“You okay?” Stiles asks, worried.

“No.”

“Can I help?”

She doesn’t answer.

Stiles offers her his bottle of water. She takes it. Drinks slowly. “I did too much,” she says finally. “I need to get back to the house. Now.”

Her eyes are glassy. Stiles holds out his hand. Her skin feels wet and she seems unsteady on her feet. They walk in silence back to the house.

***

The fact that Stiles hasn’t seen anyone but him, Laura and Cora out in the woods, neither human nor animal, helps Stiles drown the guilt he feels at going out in the preserve despite his dad forbidding him.

Which is why he drives out to the preserve one morning, not a care in the world besides the last few twinging pains of a headache. And it is also why he slams on the breaks at the sight of a sleek black Camaro parked next to Laura’s car.

His breath sticks in his chest. He recognizes that car. Derek had been so proud when he showed it to Stiles. His parents gave it to him on his sixteenth birthday, and Derek had texted him a picture immediately. Stiles hadn’t seen it since before his accident.

Stiles shuts off the engine and removes his keys from the ignition. He steps out of the car, slowly, as if the car will disappear if he moves too quickly, like it’s not really there.

He’s right next to it, close enough to touch, when a door opens and Stiles hears a voice he hasn’t heard in over two years. A voice he was secretly afraid he would never hear again.

“Stiles?” the voice says. Stiles doesn’t dare look up, still staring and his reflection in the shiny black paint of the car. “Stiles,” the voice tries again, softer. He can hear footsteps now, coming closer. He wants to move but his body won’t let him. He’s frozen, unable to do anything but look up helplessly as the boy he used to love – still loves? – walks towards him.

Derek.

“Are you real?” Stiles asks.

Derek frowns. “Of course I’m real,” he says. His voice is darker than Stiles remembers. In general, Derek looks very different. He’s taller, more muscled. He looks more serious than he did two years ago. Less carefree. Maybe that’s what New York does to people. Or maybe it’s just Derek. Of all the Hale siblings, Derek has definitely changed the most.

“What are you doing here?” Stiles asks. He feels his eyes burn, like he might start crying at any moment.

“Well, I do own the property,” Derek says with a small smile. The reminder of their conversation at the lake, one of the first times they met, is almost enough to tip Stiles over into crying, but he holds on to the edge with everything he’s got. He doesn’t want to cry in front of Derek. “I’m looking for Laura,” he adds when he takes in the look on Stiles’ face. “She hasn’t contacted me, and she was supposed to be back in New York by now.”

Stiles looks away at the reminder that Derek isn’t here to stay. That he’s probably just here to find Laura and Cora and drag them back to New York with him. Stiles isn’t going to cry. He’s not.

“She’s not home?” Stiles asks quietly, not meeting Derek’s eyes.

“No,” Derek replies.

 Stiles nods, blinks his eyes and finally looks up. “I guess I’d better go, then,” he says. “I’m not really supposed to be out here, so if you see my dad I’d appreciate it if you didn’t say anything.”

Derek opens his mouth to say something but decides against it. He nods. He looks sadder than Stiles remembers, too.

Just as Stiles is getting in his jeep, his eyes lock with Derek’s once more and then he finally says: “I missed you, Stiles,” very, very quietly.

Stiles goes home, and he’s proud to say he doesn’t start crying until he’s safely shut in his room. Later, when his dad asks if he’s okay, he tells him that his head hurts.

***

Stiles doesn’t go back to the Hale house for days. He wants to see Laura and Cora but he’s too scared of running into Derek again. Turns out staying home doesn’t help though. A few days after their awkward meeting in the woods, the doorbell rings.

Stiles is in the kitchen, leaning against the counter as he eats his cereal. His dad is at work, as usual. Stiles puts the bowl down and goes to open. When the door swings open and Stiles sees Derek standing in front of him, he almost shuts the door in his face.

“What do you want?” Stiles spits out through clenched teeth.

“I was wondering if we could talk?” Derek asks softly. He’s wearing dark jeans and a wine red Henley today. He still looks tired, but more than anything he looks sad. It makes Stiles want to hug him. His hand turns white where he’s fiercely gripping the door. He wants to say no, he desperately does. But he can’t. He can’t turn Derek away, not without giving him a chance.

He forces himself to let go of the door and step back, allowing Derek to come inside. He shuts the door behind him and walks into the living room, not turning to see if Derek’s following him.

Derek. His Derek.

Is he going to be his Derek?

Stiles sits down on the couch and Derek sits down on the other side of it, leaving plenty of room between them. It occurs to him that Derek has never been in his house. Not that he can remember.

“What do you want to talk about?” Stiles asks.

“I went to see your dad at the station yesterday,” Derek starts. Stiles frowns. That was not how he expected the conversation to start. “And we talked for a while. About Laura. And about you.” His expression is pained, as if it literally hurts him to speak.

“Do you remember that day we packed a bunch of food and a blanket and went out into the preserve to have a picnic? That day we found that big flat rock and spent hours lying in the sun?”

Stiles looks away. Because he doesn’t remember.

He hates his fucking hacked-up mind how sick he is all the time, how damaged he’s become. He hates that he’s lost his looks and failed school and quit going to lacrosse and is a burden to his dad. He hates how he still wants Derek after two years.

Maybe Derek wants to be with him. Maybe. But more likely he’s just looking for Stiles to tell him he did nothing wrong when he left him two summers ago. He’d like Stiles to tell him he’s not mad. That he’s a great guy.

But how can he forgive him when he doesn’t even know exactly what Derek’s done to him?

“No,” Stiles answers, looking at Derek again. “It must have slipped my mind.”

Derek’s face falls. “We were – You and I, we – It was an important moment.”

“Whatever,” Stiles says, rolling his eyes. “I don’t remember it. And obviously nothing that happened between us was particularly important in the long run, was it?”

Derek flinches as if Stiles physically slapped him. He looks at his hands. “I’m sorry,” he says. “I shouldn’t have said anything. Are you angry?”

Stiles stands up and spins around to stare incredulously at Derek. “Of course I’m angry,” he all but yells. “Two years of disappearance. Never calling and not writing back and making everything worse by not dealing. Now you’re all, _I missed you, Stiles_ , and coming to my house and _I want to talk_.”

“It sounds awful when you put it like that,” Derek says. He stands up and steps closer to Stiles.

“Yeah, well, that’s how I see it,” Stiles says.

“I’m sorry,” Derek says again. He runs a hand through his hair. “I’m handling everything badly,” he says. “What would you say if I asked you to start over?”

Stiles rolls his eyes again. “God, Derek.”

“What?”

“Just ask. Don’t ask what I’d say if you did ask.”

Derek nods. “Okay,” he says, taking a deep breath. “I’m asking. Can we start over?”

Stiles feels like all the fight has left him. “Okay,” he answers, too tired to even pretend to be mad. Really, he’s ecstatic that Derek is here. That Derek wants to talk. That Derek hasn’t forgotten about him. “We can start over.”

Derek smiles, and it’s the happiest Stiles has seen him since before his accident.

“Please tell me you’ll meet me again?” Derek pleads.

Stiles smiles back and nods. He will.

***

“What’s got you so happy today?” his dad asks later that night.

Stiles shrugs. “I guess I’ve just had a good day.”

His dad hums. “I’m glad,” he says.

***

Stiles meets Derek at the Hale house two days later. Derek invites him inside, and when Derek goes upstairs, Stiles follows. At the top of the stairs, Stiles grabs Derek’s hand and presses their lips together. It is what he is afraid to do, and he does it.

Derek kisses back. His fingers twist in Stiles’ and Stiles is dizzy and Derek’s holding him up and everything is clear and everything is grand, again. Their kiss turns the world to dust. There is only them and nothing else matters.

Then Derek pulls away. “I shouldn’t do this,” he mutters, shaking his head.

“Why not?” Stiles asks. Their hands are still intertwined.

“It’s not that I don’t want to, it’s –“ He trails off, as if unsure of what to say.

“I thought we started over. Isn’t this the starting over?”

“I’m a mess,” Derek says. He steps back and leans against the wall. “This is such a cliché conversation,” he groans. “I don’t know how to say this.”

“Explain,” Stiles says.

A pause. And then: “You don’t know me.”

Stiles frowns. “Explain,” he says again.

Derek puts his head in his hands. They stand there, both leaning against the wall. “Okay. Here’s part of it,” he finally says. “I’m not the same person you knew two years ago. I’ve changed. Too much has happened, some of it very recently, and I’m not sure how much I can take. There is so much going on that you don’t know about. That I’m scared to tell you.”

That’s true. He would have to be blind to not notice all the ways Derek has changed. He looks different, obviously, but it’s not just that. It’s like his entire personality has changed. He’s tense, like he’s constantly waiting for something bad to happen. Like he’s always on guard. Always waiting for the next disaster.

“I’ve changed too,” Stiles says quietly.

Derek closes his eyes. “I know, Stiles. I know and I’m sorry. I’m sorry I disappeared, I’m sorry I never called. I’m sorry all this happened to you. I’m sorry you had to go through all this.”

Stiles reaches out and grabs one of Derek’s hands again, limp at his side. “You’re here now,” Stiles says.

“Yeah,” Derek says sadly. “I guess I am.”

“I don’t need your pity, Derek,” Stiles says firmly. “I don’t need it and I don’t want it. But I want you. I want you here with me.” He squeezes Derek’s hand, rubbing a soothing thumb across the back of it.

***

Stiles doesn’t see Laura or Cora any of the next times he comes over to the house. Derek doesn’t mention them, so Stiles doesn’t ask, but he misses them. They were his friends, too. He hopes they haven’t left.

***

That night, Derek and Stiles find themselves alone in the Japanese garden.

Derek paces, all the way up and down and back again.

Now is when they can talk.

Now is when they can stop pretending to be normal.

Stiles is looking for the right words, the best way to start.

Suddenly, Derek sits down next to Stiles. “You are very, very beautiful, Stiles,” he says.

“It’s the moonlight,” Stiles says. “Makes everyone look pretty.”

“Do you – do you have a boyfriend?” Derek asks, looking up at the bright moon above them.

Of course he doesn’t. He has never had a boyfriend except for Derek. “My boyfriend is named Percocet,” he says. “We’re very close. I even went to Yellowstone with him last summer.”

“God,” Derek is annoyed. He stands and starts pacing again.

“I was joking,” Stiles says.

Derek’s back next to Stiles. “You say you don’t want people to feel sorry for you –“

“Yes,” Stiles agrees.

“ – But then you come out with these statements. _My boyfriend is named Percocet._ And it’s clear you want _everyone_ to feel sorry for you. And I would, I would, but you have no idea how lucky you are.”

Stiles flushes.

He is right.

He does want people to feel sorry for him.

And then he doesn’t.

And he does.

And then he doesn’t.

“I’m sorry,” he says.

“You have a life stretching out in front of you with a million possibilities,” Derek says. “It – it grates on me when you ask for sympathy, that’s all.”

Derek, his Derek.

He is right. He is.

But he also doesn’t understand.

“I know no one’s beating me,” he says, feeling defensive. “I know I have food and a dad and a place to live. I’m not dying of cancer. Lots of people have it much worse than I. I shouldn’t complain or be ungrateful.”

“Okay, then.”

“But listen,” Stiles says, not meeting Derek’s eyes. They’re almost arguing, but not really. “You have no idea what it feels like to have headaches like this. No idea. It hurts,” he says – and he realizes tears are running down his face, though he’s not sobbing. “It makes it hard to be alive, some days. A lot of times I wish I were dead, I truly do, just to make the pain stop.”

“You do not,” Derek says harshly, voice breaking. “You do not wish you were dead. Don’t say that.”

“I just want the pain to be over,” Stiles says, shaking his head. “On the days the pills don’t work. I want it to end and I would do anything – really, anything – if I knew for sure it would end the pain.”

There is a silence. Derek turns to face him. “What do you do then?” he asks. “When it’s like that?”

Stiles shrugs. “Nothing. I lie there and wait, and remind myself over and over that it doesn’t last forever. That there will be another day and after that, yet another day. One of those days, I’ll get up and eat breakfast and feel okay.”

“Another day?”

“Yes.”

Now Derek steps towards him and wraps his arms around him, and they are clinging to each other.

Derek is shivering slightly and he kisses Stiles’ neck with cold lips. They stay like that, enfolded in each other’s arms, for a minute or two. And it feels like the universe is reorganizing itself. And Stiles knows any anger they felt has disappeared. Derek kisses Stiles’ lips and touches his cheek. Stiles loves him. He has always loved him.

They stay there for a very, very long time. Forever.

***

One day, when Stiles goes to the house and finds that Derek isn’t home, Laura opens the door. She asks him to sit outside in the grass to talk. Stiles can tell there’s something she wants to tell him. That there’s something she’s building up the courage to say. He lets her ramble, staying uncharacteristically silent for once as Laura talks about the weather and Cora and this really cool book she wants to read. Stiles nods and smiles and replies in appropriate places.

And then Laura’s voice slowly dies out. They sit in silence in the sunlight until she decides to speak again. Stiles hears her take a deep breath.

“I never had a boyfriend,” she blurts out.

Stiles turns to look at her, frowning. There are tears in her eyes. “What about Drake Loggerhead?” he asks. “What about yellow roses and the sexual intercourse?”

She looks down. “I lied.”

“Why?”

“You know how, when you come out here in the woods, it’s a different world? You can be whoever you want to be. Someone better, maybe.”

He nods.

“That summer, when you were here all the time, I noticed Derek. He looked at you like you hung the moon.”

“He did?” Stiles asks, frowning.

“I want someone to look at me that way so much, Stiles. So much. And I didn’t mean to, but I found myself lying. I’m sorry.”

Stiles doesn’t know what to say. He takes a deep breath.

“Don’t gasp,” Laura snaps. “Okay? It’s fine. It’s fine if I never have anyone at all. It’s fine if not one person ever loves me, all right? It’s perfectly fine.”

Stiles opens his mouth to answer when his phone buzzes in his pocket. He takes it out and reads a text from his dad. ‘I’ll be home in an hour. Bringing dinner,’ it says.

“I’ve got to go,” Stiles says.

She doesn’t answer.

Stiles pulls his hoodie on and trudges his way back to his jeep.

***

He eats dinner with his dad, but that night he is hit with a migraine again. It’s worse than the one before. He lies in his darkened room. Scavenger birds peck at the oozing matter that leaks from his crushed skull.

He opens his eyes and Derek is standing over him. Stiles sees him through a haze. Light shines through the curtains, where his window is open. Derek must have climbed in. He looks sympathetic, and then his eyes wander up to the papers on Stiles’ wall.

He’s staring at the sticky notes, at the new memories and information he’s added as it came. Peter and the ivory wolf, Derek giving him that book, Talia asking Derek about where he went.

“Don’t read my papers,” Stiles moans. “Don’t.”

He steps back. “It’s up there for anyone to see. Sorry.”

“There usually isn’t anyone other than myself in my room,” Stiles grumbles, turning over onto his stomach and burying his forehead in a cool part of his pillow.

“I didn’t know you were collecting stories,” Derek says, sitting down on the edge of the bed, taking care to not sit on Stiles’ legs.

“I’m trying to remember what happened that nobody wants to talk about,” he says. “including you.”

“I want to talk about it,” Derek says.

Stiles turns his head to look at him. “You do?”

He is staring at the floor. “I had a girlfriend, two summers ago.”

“I know. Cora told me.”

He nods.

“I fell for you so hard, Stiles. There was no stopping it. I know I should have told you everything and I should have broken it off with Kate right away. It was just – she wasn’t there.”

Stiles looks at him.

“I was a coward. And then it was too late.”

Stiles’ face burns with remembered jealousy.

“I am sorry, Stiles,” he goes on. “That’s what I should have said to you on the first day I got back. I was wrong and I’m sorry.”

Stiles nods. It’s nice to hear him say it. He wishes he wasn’t so high.

“Half the time I hate myself for all the things I’ve done,” Derek says. “But the thing that makes me really messed up is the contradiction: when I’m not hating myself, I feel righteous and victimized. Like the world is so unfair.”

“Why do you hate yourself?” Stiles asks quietly.  

And before he knows it, Derek is lying on the bed next to him. His cold fingers wrap around Stiles’ hot ones, and their faces are close together. “Because it’s all my fault,” he says slowly. “Because I want things I can’t have.”

But he has Stiles. Doesn’t he know he already has him?

Or is Derek talking about something else, something else he can’t have?

Stiles is sweaty and his head hurts and he can’t think clearly.

“Someone did something to me that is too awful to remember,” he whispers to Derek.

“I love you,” Derek says, and Stiles thinks he means it. 

They hold each other and kiss for a long time.

The pain in Stiles’ head fades, a little. But not all the way.

*** 

***

Stiles opens his eyes and the clock reads midnight.

Derek is gone.

***

Later that night he wakes up again, cold. He’s kicked his blankets off and the window is open. He sits up too fast and his head spins.

A memory.

Laura, crying. Bent over with snot running down her face, not even bothering to wipe it off. She’s doubled over, she’s shaking, she might throw up. It’s dark out, and she’s wearing a white t-shirt and with a wind jacket over it – Cora’s blue one.

Why is she wearing Cora’s wind jacket?

Why is she so sad?

***

_Once upon a time there was a king and queen who had three beautiful children. They gave them whatever their hearts desired, and when he grew of age the middle child, the only prince, was promised a bride._

_She was the princess of a neighboring kingdom, and the two families had finally agreed on a truce after decades of war. To ensure the peace, they agreed to arrange a marriage between their two children._

_However, the boy, who had always gotten everything he wanted, did not want to marry her. He was in love, desperately, desperately in love, with another boy. He was not a prince, not royalty. He was a commoner, and yet, the prince loved him._

_When the princess found out, she was furious. She had been promised everything, only to have it torn out of her hands at the last minute. The anger filled her, consumed her, and as soon as she could, she left the kingdom._

_She did not even look back at the castle that should have been her home._

_There, she would never have a place._

_And maybe,_

_just maybe,_

_she’d come back one day,_

_and burn that_

_fucking_

_palace_

_to the ground._


	4. Look, a fire

Look.

A fire.

There, on the edge of the preserve. Where the maple tree stands over the wide lawn.

The house is alight. The flames shoot high, brightening the sky. There is no one there to help.

Far in the distance, Stiles can hear sirens, making their way towards the house.

There is a woman, watching as the flames consume the house that he loves.

Burning down the palace. The palace of the king and queen who had three beautiful children.

Stiles is watching too, from where he’s standing near the tree line. Watching as the woman watches the fire.

He remembers this now, in a rush that hits him so hard he falls, and he plunges down, down to the rocky, rocky bottom, and he can see the trees and the light shining down from the sky above and his arms and legs feel numb but his fingers are cold.

And then he is up again, and breathing.

And the Hale house is burning.

***

Stiles is in bed, in the early light of dawn.

It is the first day of the last week before school starts again. He stumbles to the window, wrapped in his blanket. He stares out towards the preserve, imagining he can see the new Hale house. All hard modernity and a Japanese garden.

He knows what it is, now. It is a house built on ashes. Ashes of the life the Hales shared, ashes of the maple from which the tire swing flew, ashes of the old Victorian house with the porch and the hammock. The new house is built on the grave of all the trophies and symbols of the family: The wolf photographs, the family pictures, the drawings from when Derek and Laura and Cora were younger.

She burned it all.

On a night when Stiles came over to find Derek, only to find out that Derek wasn’t home. That Talia was out looking for him, according to Peter. That Laura and Cora were looking too. On a night when Stiles decided to look for Derek at the lake, only to come back to find the house on fire, a woman he had never seen before holding an empty jug of gas.

The house was gone. And that was why the Hales left. Their house had burned down on a warm July night, and they had left Beacon Hills behind.

Stiles saw the woman smile before turning and walking away. Disappearing into the trees.

***

As soon as his dad leaves for work, Stiles is on his way out to the preserve. He finds Laura, sitting with her legs crossed and her eyes closed in the Japanese garden.

“I’m meditating,” she says.

“Someone set the house on fire.”

Laura opens her eyes. She stares at Stiles for a long time but doesn’t say a word. Eventually, she uncrosses her legs and pulls her knees up to her chest. “What else do you remember?” she asks.

Stiles hesitates.

He can see the fire. The smoke. How huge the house looked as it burned.

He can see Cora’s hand, her chipped gold nail polish, holding a jug of gas for the cars. Except it’s not Cora. It’s the woman he saw. The unknown woman. He still doesn’t know where she fits in, or why she did what she did, or whether she got caught or not.

Laura, being held by someone on the lawn outside the house.

Derek, holding on to a tree, his face lit by the glow of a bonfire.

No. Correction.

The glow of his house, burning to the ground.

But these are memories he has had all along. He just knows where to fit them now.

“Not everything,” he tells Laura. “I just know someone set the fire. I can see the flames.”

She lies down and stretches her arms over her head.

“Are you okay?” Stiles asks.

“I’m fucking tired. If you want to know.” Laura rolls over on her face and pushes her nose into the grass. “We didn’t do anything wrong,” she mumbles into the earth. “We were just living our lives, peacefully. We weren’t hurting anyone. But they still came after us.”

Stiles frowns. “Who?”

“The hunters.”

Stiles lies down in the grass next to her so he can hear what she’s saying.

“The hunters have a code. ‘We hunt those who hunt us.’ They’re supposed to follow it, but not all of them do. Some of them see us as monsters, no matter what we do.” She turns her head and stares at Stiles. “They burned our house down. Humans lived there. Human children.”

“What are you talking about?” Stiles asks. “What do you mean humans? Why would anyone set fire to your house?”

“You know this, Stiles. I know you do,” Laura says. “He told you. I know Derek told you.”

As she talks, memories flash across Stiles’ skull, so hard and bright they hurt. He flinches and puts his hands over his eyes.

“Do you remember any more about the fire?” she asks gently. “Is it coming back?”

Stiles closes his eyes for a moment and tries. “No, not that,” he says. “But other things.”

Laura reaches out and takes his hand.

***

Summer fifteen, Talia and Derek fought a lot. Derek refused to tell her who he kept running off to meet, and Talia refused to back down.

“We don’t keep secrets from each other, Derek, you know that.”

“I just want some fucking privacy for once in my goddamn life. Is that so much to ask?”

***

Derek and Stiles went night swimming. They lay on the grass and looked at the stars. They kissed in the preserve.

They fell in love.

He gave Stiles a book. _With everything, everything._

On the days Derek wasn’t home, Stiles missed him.

They didn’t talk about his girlfriend. Stiles couldn’t ask. Derek didn’t say.

***

Stiles and Derek packed a picnic and walked out into the preserve together, exploring, looking for places they hadn’t been yet.

“My mom wants me to stay away from you,” Derek admitted, staring straight ahead as they walked.

Stiles frowned. “Why?” he asked. “I thought Talia liked me?”

Derek smiled. “She does,” he said. “That’s her point. She thinks I’ll end up hurting you.”

“I trust you,” Stiles said, even as he thought that he might agree. Derek had a girlfriend. A girlfriend he probably loved. There was no way this could end well.

And Stiles loved Derek. He loved the curve of his jaw, the hole in his T-shirt, the way his mind worked, the way he talked. Stiles imagined, then, that he knew him completely.

Derek sighed. “My mom doesn’t.”

Stiles leaned in and kissed him. It still seemed so magical that he could do that, and that Derek would kiss him back. So magical that they showed their weaknesses to one another, their fears and their fragility. “How long have you known this? Why haven’t we talked about it?” Stiles asked.

Derek kissed him again. “I was being selfish,” he said. “I don’t want you to leave. I love having you here.”

“I love being here,” Stiles said. “I’m not going anywhere.”

“Part of me doesn’t want to ruin it. Doesn’t want to even imagine that this isn’t perfect.”

Stiles understood how he felt.

Or he thought he did.

They continued walking through the woods until they got to a wide, flat rock that the sun warmed with its beams. They sat on the rock in the sun and ate their food and imagined the rock was an island in the middle of the sea, water crashing up towards them.

They held each other and forgot, for as long as they could, that life wasn’t perfect.

On the way back, Derek looked up at the sky and said: “The full moon is tomorrow night. You should probably stay home.”

Stiles didn’t understand what he meant, but he did as he said. Because he trusted him.

***

_Once upon a time there was a man living in a castle in the woods. And evil witch had killed his family and then cursed him to look like a hideous beast. A large wolf with red eyes. If he could not find someone to love him before his twenty-first birthday, he would stay like that forever._

_One day, a boy wandered through the woods and up to the castle. He was a beautiful boy, with fair skin dotted with moles and vibrant, hazel eyes. At first, he was scared of the beast, but he soon began to care for the man behind the hideous exterior._

_The witches’ spell is broken before the man’s twenty-first birthday, and they live happily ever after._

_Then what?_

_We all know that Beauty grows to love the beast. He grows to love him, despite what his family might think – for his charm and education, his knowledge of the world and his sensitive heart._

_Indeed, he is a human and always was one. He was never a wolf at all. It was only a hideous illusion._

_Trouble is, it’s awfully hard to convince the townspeople of that._

_They see the jaw and the muzzle, hears the hideous growl whenever Beauty brings his new husband into town for a visit. It doesn’t matter how civilized and erudite the husband is. It doesn’t matter how kind._

_There will always be people who see a beast. Who see it as something hideous and vicious. Something to be feared. Something to be hunted. Their worry will never cease._

***

One night, summer fifteen, Stiles turned around to find Derek standing among the trees, moonlight glinting off his skin, eyes flashing. Stiles smiled and walked over to Derek, moving away from the other people on the lawn. The Hales where there, obviously, and Stiles’ dad, along with a bunch of other adults Stiles didn’t know.

“I have a dire need for chocolate,” Derek announced once Stiles was close enough to hear him. “so I’m raiding the pantry. You coming?”

Stiles grinned and nodded, and they walked together on the narrow path that surrounded the house and weaved through the preserve, fingers intertwined.

They stepped around to the side entrance of the house, the one that led to the mudroom filled with tennis racquets and clean towels. With one hand on the screen door, Derek turned and pulled Stiles close.

Derek’s warm lips on Stiles’, their hands were still together, there, outside the door to the house.

For a moment, the two of them were alone on the planet, with all the vastness of the sky and the future and the past spreading out around them.

They tiptoed through the mudroom and into the large pantry that opened off the kitchen. The room was old-fashioned, with heavy wooden drawers and shelves for holding jams and pickles, back when the house was built. Now it stored cookies, cases of wine, potato chips, root vegetables, seltzer. They left the light off, in case someone came into the kitchen, but they were sure the adults were all outside in the yard, enjoying the barbeque.

They were rummaging when they heard voices. It was Talia, Philip and Peter, arguing quietly, their speech hushed and urgent.

“We have to do something before it’s too late, Talia,” Peter said. “Take them out before they take us out.”

“You don’t mean that,” Philip said.

“Don’t tell me what I mean,” Peter hissed. “It’s only a matter of time before they make their move. And with Derek spending most of his time either with Stiles or his mystery girlfriend there’s no telling who might get hurt in the process. I will not stand by as my kids – my human kids – are put in danger.”

“They have a code,” Talia finally said. “They haven’t broken it. The Argents are trustworthy. As far as I know, they aren’t even staying in the area. Chris and his family are in San Francisco, and Gerard is off somewhere doing god knows what. There’s no point in worrying about something that might not even be a threat. Do you want Johnny and Cady to grow up being afraid of their own shadows? Being paranoid about every little thing that happens?”

“There’s a difference between being paranoid and being genuinely concerned. I told you I saw Kate Argent downtown. If none of the other Argents live here anymore, then what is she doing here?”

“We don’t know that Kate’s like her father. And besides, you might have seen wrong. It could have been anyone.”

“I know what she looks like and I know what her father’s like. There’s no way she isn’t the same. Just look at Chris. Look at Victoria. She wasn’t even born into the family and she takes after Gerard. And I’m sure when she’s a little older that daughter of theirs will be just the same.”

“Peter, I am your Alpha and they may not be our allies but we have a truce, one they have never even attempted to break. If they try to get closer to us somehow, then we can talk, but until that happens I don’t want to hear any more about this.”

“You’re making a mistake, Talia,” Peter said.

“If I am, then that’s my mistake to make. I’d rather be cautious than paranoid for no reason.”

***

The next day, Derek brought Stiles out to the lake. He told him there was something he needed to tell him. His skin was pale, and Derek wouldn’t really look at him. Stiles tried to hold his hand, but it was clammy, and Derek pulled away after just a few seconds.

Only when they finally got to the lake did Derek look at him.

“I need to show you something,” he said. “And I want you to know that I won’t hurt you, and please don’t freak out.”

Stiles frowned. “You could never hurt me,” he replied, puzzled.

Derek stared back at him, a grim look on his face. “If you say so,” he said. He took a deep breath. “Okay, here I go,” he said, closing his eyes and concentrating.

Stiles stared, shocked as the bones of Derek’s face seemed to shift right in front of his eyes. His face grew longer, bulkier, and his eyebrows all but disappeared. His teeth grew in his mouth until Stiles could clearly see fangs peeking out even between closed lips. When Derek opened his eyes and looked at Stiles, his eyes were burning yellow.

Stiles couldn’t stop staring, shocked at what he was seeing. Derek took a cautious step forward, and Stiles didn’t move.

“Say something,” Derek said finally. His voice was deeper than Stiles was used to, almost a growl. And then it all started coming together. The wolf photographs, the ivory statue, Derek’s warning about the full moon.

“You’re a werewolf?” Stiles asked, thinking to himself that he sounded ridiculous. Werewolves weren’t real, and yet, here one was standing right in front of him. Stiles had watched the transformation himself.

Derek nodded slowly. Stiles reached out to touch Derek’s face, stopping a few inches away and staring at Derek, silently asking for permission which Derek gave with another small nod. Stiles touched the skin of Derek’s cheek, his ridiculous sideburns, his lips. His heart was beating in his chest all the time, but not from fear. Never from fear.

After a few minutes of this he pulled his hands back and Derek transformed back.

***

“What happened then?” Stiles asks Laura. They are still lying in the Japanese garden, staring up at the sky. Summer seventeen.

“You don’t remember?” she asks.

“No,” Stiles shakes his head.

“Mom was furious,” she says. “She yelled at Derek for ages, about how he’d been keeping secrets all summer and then he just goes and tells you about us without even consulting with her first. It wasn’t even that she didn’t trust you. She did, completely. She was worried that the secret might make you more exposed than you already would be, hanging out with werewolves. She didn’t want to make it any easier for anyone who might want to hurt us. Derek yelled back that he was tired of keeping his entire life a secret, and that he just wanted to be honest for once. It was a mess.”

“Was I there?” Stiles asks.

Laura shakes her head. “It was after you left. And to be honest I think that might have been a good thing. I don’t know that you being there wouldn’t just have made things worse.” She pauses. “Mom was threatening to send Derek away for his senior year if he didn’t start telling the truth, and that’s when Derek stormed off. He ran out into the woods, and I followed him.”

Beside him, Laura sighs heavily. “He told me everything, then,” she says. “He told me about the two of you, though it didn’t take a genius to figure that one out. You were pretty obvious.”

Stiles smiles at the memories that are flooding back. It was a good summer. Until it wasn’t anymore. “And he told me about Kate, this woman he’d been seeing.”

Stiles frowns. “Kate Argent?” he asks.

“The one and only,” Laura says sadly. “He didn’t know about the Argents. He didn’t know they were hunters. There was no reason for him to know, really. They had the code. What happened was never supposed to happen. Derek was never supposed to be alone. He was always meant to have a pack and an Alpha to look after him. He was never supposed to meet any of the Argents, and Kate took advantage of that.”

Stiles’ heart aches for Derek. It makes so much more sense now. Of course Derek would be blaming himself. Of course he wouldn’t come see Stiles. Of course he’d be different when he finally came back.

“To Kate, our house was like the symbol of everything that was wrong.” It’s Cora’s voice. She came out so quietly Stiles didn’t hear her. She is now sitting in the grass next to them, holding Laura’s other hand. “The seat of power, if you will. If she got rid of that, she was convinced we would disappear as well. And she used Derek to get close enough to do just that.”

Stiles is in shock, hearing all this. He knew Derek had a girlfriend, but he could never imagine it would be anything like this. He just thought Derek was embarrassed, like most other teenagers.

“And then you happened,” Laura continues.

Stiles frowns. “Me? What did I do?” he asks.

Laura shrugs. “Hell if I know. You were you I guess, and Derek apparently has a thing for weird, pale, annoying as fuck kids.” She pauses. “No offence,” she adds.

Stiles snorts out a laugh. “None taken,” he says. “So, what? Derek liked me so he stopped hanging out with Kate?”

Laura shrugs again. “I don’t know,” she admits. “But I guess the fact that Derek was pulling away made her move her plans up. She got sloppy. Left witnesses.”

Stiles thinks of the memory he has, of the house burning. A blond woman standing by to watch, and Stiles in the woods. “Me?” he asks, and Laura nods.

“She planned it to the night of the barbeque, after everyone had left,” Cora says.

“She didn’t plan the fight, but it all worked in her favor. She was insane. Like she thought we were all demons she could purify with fire. Like all she needed was a spark.”

“It didn’t matter to her that we loved the house. That all our memories, our childhoods were encased in that huge mansion in the woods.”

“It didn’t matter to her that we were a family,” Cora says. “All she could see was a bunch of monsters. A bunch of animals she wanted to hunt; destroy.”

Stiles turns his head to look at Laura and Cora’s sad faces. “But you rebuilt the house,” he says. “You came back. She didn’t win.”

Laura looks over at him. “But does it even matter?” she asks. “She destroyed our house. Our family is split up all over. We’re never going to be a family again. Not like we were.”

“I know. I’m sorry.”

“I’m glad you remember the fire, Stiles,” Cora says.

“Yeah, well, some of it,” Stiles replies. Laura says she doesn’t feel well and goes inside.

Stiles lies on the ground and stares up at the sky with Cora for a while longer, until he realizes that Cora’s fallen asleep.

***

Stiles finds his dad in his office. He’s working on something on his computer, case files spread out over every available surface.

“You’re never here anymore,” the sheriff notes. “Where do you keep running off to?”

Stiles hesitates for a second. “The preserve, usually,” he says.

His dad freezes. “What?” he asks, turning to look at Stiles.

Stiles takes a deep breath. “I’ve been going out to the Hale house,” he says. “To see Derek.” He can tell his dad is gearing up to lecture Stiles about how incredibly stupid that is, but that isn’t what Stiles is here for, so he keeps going before his father can start.

“Listen, dad,” he says quietly but firmly. “Why did you tell everyone not to talk to me about the fire?”

His dad visibly deflates at the question. He slowly closes the case files and puts them down on the desk. He stares at Stiles for a long time.

“You remember the fire?” he asks eventually.

Stiles nods. “Last night, it came rushing back. I don’t remember all of it, but yeah, I remember it happened. I remember Talia and Derek were fighting, and Derek ran off. I remember I left and came back later to look for him, and saw the house on fire.

“Do you remember anything else?” his dad asks slowly.

Stiles shrugs. “What the sky looked like,” he says. “With the flames. The smell of the smoke.”

“That’s all?” he asks.

Stiles bites his lip, thinking of the woman – Kate Argent. He doesn’t know why, but he has a feeling he shouldn’t tell his dad about her just yet. Not until he talks to Derek.

Stiles nods. “Why doesn’t anyone talk to me about it?” he asks again.

His dad sighs. “Because of your – because of –“ He stops, looking for words. “Because of your pain.”

“Because I have headaches, because I can’t remember my accident, I can’t handle the idea that the Hale house burned down?”

“The doctors told me not to add stress to your life,” he says. “They said the fire might have triggered the headaches, whether it was smoke inhalation or – or fear,” he finishes, looking away.

“I’m not a child,” Stiles says, annoyed. “I can be trusted to know basic information about my life. All summer I’ve been working to remember my accident, and what happened right before. Why not tell me, dad?”

“I did tell you,” his dad says. “Two years ago. I told you over and over, but you never remembered it the next day. And when I talked to the doctor, he said I shouldn’t keep upsetting you that way, shouldn’t keep pushing you.”

“You live with me,” Stiles exclaims. “Don’t you have any faith in your own judgement over that of some doctor who barely knows me?”

“He’s an expert,” his dad says.

“What makes you think I’d want everyone in this town keeping secrets from me – even Scott, even Derek, for God’s sake – rather than know what happened? What makes you think I am so fragile I can’t even know simple facts?”

“You seem that fragile to me,” his dad says. “And to be honest, I haven’t been sure I could handle your reaction.”

“You can’t even imagine how insulting that is.”

“I love you,” his dad tries.

Stiles turns and walks away. He can’t look at his dad right now.

***

Laura is in his room when Stiles opens the door. She must have climbed in through the open window. She is sitting at his desk with her hand on Stiles’ laptop.

“I wonder if I could read the emails you sent me last year,” she says. “Do you have them on your computer?”

Stiles nods. “Yeah.”

“I never read them,” she admits. “I pretended I did, but I never even opened them.”

“Why not?” Stiles frowns.

“I just didn’t,” she says. “I thought it didn’t matter, but now I think it does. And look!” She makes her voice light. “I even left the house to do it!”

Stiles swallows as much anger as he can. “I understand not writing back, but why wouldn’t you even read my emails?”

“I know,” Laura says. “It sucks and I’m a horrible wench. Please, will you let me read them now?”

Stiles opens the laptop. Does a search and finds all the notes addressed to her.

There are twenty-eight. Stiles reads over her shoulder. Most of them are charming, darling emails from a person supposedly without headaches.

_Laura!_

_Tomorrow I leave for Yellowstone with my dad. Wish me luck and know that I wish I was spending the summer with you. And Cora. And even Derek._

_I know, I know, I should be over it._

_I am over it._

_I am._

_Off to Wyoming to meet attractive park rangers, so there._

_\- Stiles_

That’s how most of them go. But a few of the emails are neither charming nor darling. Those ones are pitiful and true.

_Laura_

_Dad keeps looking at me while I sleep._

_My head hurts all the time. I don’t know what to do to make it stop. The pills don’t work. Someone is splitting through the top of my head with an axe, a messy axe that won’t make a clean cut through my skull. Whoever wields it has to hack away at my head, coming down over and over, but not always right in the same place. I have multiple wounds._

_I dream sometimes that the person wielding the axe is Talia._

_Other times, the person is me._

_Other times, the person is Derek._

_Sorry to sound crazy. My hands are shaky as I type this and the screen is too bright._

_I want to die, sometimes, my head hurts so much. I keep writing you all my brightest thoughts but I never say the dark ones, even though I think them all the time. So I am saying them now. Even if you do not answer, I will know somebody heard them, and that, at least, is something._

_\- Stiles_

They read all twenty-eight emails. When she is finished, Laura kisses Stiles on the cheek. “I can’t even say sorry,” she tells him. “There is not even a Scrabble word for how bad I feel.”

Then she is gone.

***

Stiles brings his laptop to the bed and creates a new document. He takes down his notes and begins typing those and all his new memories, fast and with a thousand errors. He fills in gaps with guesses where he doesn’t have actual recall.

She wants me to stay away from you.  
Derek’s transformation  
We don’t keep secrets in this family.  
Laura, crying in Cora’s jacket.  
Kate Argent smiling, watching the house burn.

Oh God, oh God, oh God.

That’s when it hits him. Really, really hits him.

The house.

The house is gone. It’ll never be what it used to be. It’ll never hold that same magic as it did before.

It’s gone. The Hales aren’t coming back. They’re never coming home to Beacon Hills and Derek isn’t going to stay. He’s going to leave. And Stiles won’t see him again.

***

Stiles runs out of the house. It is darker out now, nearly time for dinner. His feelings leak out of his eyes, crumpling his face, heave through his frame as he thinks about that beautiful house, unable to do anything but burn. Unable to save itself from the blazing flames.

Where to go? He cannot go to the Hale house, not now. He can’t face his dad; can’t face anyone he knows. The town is so fucking small. There is nowhere to go. He is trapped in this town, where he witnessed the house of a family he loved burn to ashes.

All his bravado from that morning is gone. It doesn’t matter that Cora and Laura and Derek are back. Because no one else is. They’re gone. They’re not coming back.

He is sobbing these strange, silent sobs, standing in the middle of the road. His face is soaked; his chest is contracting. He stumbles back home.

Derek is on the steps.

***

He jumps up when he sees Stiles and wraps his arms around him. Stiles sobs into his shoulder and tucks his arms under Derek’s jacket and around his waist.

He doesn’t ask what is wrong until Stiles tells him.

“It’s gone. The house, the pictures, the memories – it’s all gone.”  

He is quiet for a moment. Then, “Yeah.”

Stiles doesn’t speak again until his body stops shaking.

“Let’s sit down,” Derek says.

They settle on the front steps. Derek rests his head against Stiles’.

“I loved you,” Stiles says. “You deserved so much better.”

“We all did,” Derek says.

“I –“ Stiles chokes on his own words. “I’m so fucking sorry, Derek,” he says.

Derek holds him close. “You didn’t know,” he says.

“I was so angry at you for leaving,” Stiles says. “And I didn’t even know. Fuck. I’m so sorry.”

“It’s okay, Stiles. I don’t blame you.”

“I blame me.”

They sit for a while longer.

“Is that everything?” Derek asks.

“What?”

“Everything you were crying about?”

“God forbid there’s more,” Stiles says.

Derek is silent.

And still silent.

“Oh god, there is more,” he says, and his chest feels hollow and iced.

“Yeah,” Derek says sadly. “There is more.”

“More that people aren’t telling me. More that Dad would rather I didn’t know.”

Derek takes a moment to think. “I think I have been telling you, but you can’t hear it. You’ve been sick, Stiles.”

“You’re not telling me directly,” Stiles says.

“No.”

“Why the hell not?”

“Your dad said it was best. And – well, with us coming back here, I had faith that you’d remember.” Derek takes his arm off Stiles’ shoulder and wraps his hands around his knees.

Derek, his Derek.

Stiles kisses his cheek. “I remember more about us than I used to,” he tells him. “I remember you and me kissing at the door of the mudroom before it all went so wrong. You and me in the forest. On the flat rock, where no one could see us. And by the lake, where you showed me your family’s secret.”

Derek nods.

“But I still don’t remember what went wrong,” he says. “Why we weren’t together when I got hurt. Did I go looking for you in the woods after your argument with your mom? Did I not find you?”  Stiles cannot look him in the eyes. “I think I deserve an honest answer, even if whatever’s between us now isn’t going to last.”

Derek’s face crumples and he hides it in his hands. “I don’t know what to do,” he says. “I don’t know what I’m supposed to do.”

“Just tell me,” Stiles says.

“I shouldn’t stay here with you,” he says. “I should go back to the house.”

“Why?” Stiles asks.

“I have to,” he says, standing up and walking. Then he stops and turns. “I messed everything up,” he says. “You deserve to be with someone who won’t hurt you like I did.” He is crying again. “I shouldn’t have kissed you, or come to your house. I shouldn’t have told you how beautiful you are. I shouldn’t even have come back here. I shouldn’t stay.”

“I want you to,” Stiles says.

“I know, but I should have stayed away. It’s fucked up that I did all that. I’m sorry. I’m not the same guy you fell in love with. I don’t think I ever will be. Everything I care about gets ruined.”

“Come back here,” Stiles tells him, but when he doesn’t move, Stiles goes to him. He puts his hands on Derek’s neck and his cheek against Derek’s. Stiles kisses him hard so he knows he means it. His mouth is so soft and he’s just the best person Stiles knows, the best person he’s ever known, no matter what bad things have happened between them and no matter what happens after this. “I love you,” Stiles whispers.

Derek pulls back. “This is what I’m talking about. I’m sorry. I just wanted to see you.”

He turns around and is lost in the dark.

***

***

The Beacon Hills hospital. Summer fifteen, after his accident.

Stiles was lying in a bed under blue sheets. You would think hospital sheets would be white, but those were blue. The room was hot. Stiles had an IV in one arm.

Dad and Melissa were staring down at him.

Stiles was listening to music with ear buds in his ears, so he couldn’t hear what the adults were saying. Melissa was crying.

The song:

I miss you when you’re gone  
and I always act dumb  
when you’re gone  
when you’re gone  
when you’re gone

Stiles lifted his hand to take out the ear buds. The hand he saw was bandaged.

Both his hands were bandaged.

And his feet. He could feel tape on them, beneath the blue sheets.

His hands and feet were bandaged, because they were burned.

***

_Once upon a time there was a king who had three beautiful daughters._

_No, no, wait._

_Once upon a time there were three bears who lived in a wee house in the woods._

_Once upon a time there were three billy goats who lived near a bridge._

_Once upon a time there were three soldiers, tramping together down the roads after the war._

_Once upon a time there were three little pigs._

_Once upon a time there were three brothers._

_No, this is it. This is the variation he wants._

_Once upon a time there were three beautiful children, two girls and a boy. When each baby was born, their parents rejoiced, the heavens rejoiced, even the fairies rejoiced. The fairies came to christening parties and gave the babies magical gifts._

_Strength, curiosity and grace._

_Snark, compassion and truth._

_Contemplation, enthusiasm and rain._

_And yet, there was a witch._

_There is always a witch._

_As the children grew, she was jealous of the girls, and jealous of the boy, too. They were blessed with all these fairy gifts, gifts the witch had been denied at her own christening._

_The eldest girl was strong and fast, capable and beautiful. Though it’s true, she felt powerless._

_The next girl was witty, generous and ethical. Though it’s true, she was short-tempered._

_And the boy was studious and open-hearted. Though it’s true, he kept secrets._

_The witch, she was none of these things, for her parents had angered the fairies. No gifts were ever bestowed upon her. She was lonely. Her only strength was her dark and ugly magic._

_She confused being mad with being brave, and planned atrocities while imagining she merited praise for it._

_She confused being Hunter with being savior, and imagined ridding the world of the gifted children._

_She confused being clever with being intelligent, and spellbound the beautiful boy with her entrancing stories._

_Her magic was all she had, and she used it to destroy what she most admired. She visited each young person in turn on their tenth birthday, but did not harm them outright. The protection of some kind fairy – the lilac fairy, perhaps – prevented her from doing so._

_What she did instead was curse them._

_“When you are sixteen,” proclaimed the witch in a rage of jealousy. “you shall prick your finger on a spindle – no, you shall strike a match – yes, you will strike a match and everyone you love will die in its flame.”_

_The parents of the children were frightened of the curse, and tried, as people will do, to avoid it. They moved themselves and the children far away, to a castle in the middle of the woods. A castle where there were no matches._

_There, surely, they would be safe._

_There, surely, the witch would never find them._

_But find them she did. And when the youngest girl was fifteen, these beautiful children, just before her sixteenth birthday and when their nervous parents were not yet expecting it, the jealous witch brought her toxic, hateful self into their lives in the shape of a blond maiden._

_The maiden befriended the beautiful boy. She kissed him and took him on adventures and told him stories._

_Then she gave the boy a box of matches._

_The boy was entranced, for at seventeen he had never seen fire._

_Go on, strike, said the witch, smiling. Fire is beautiful. Nothing bad will happen._

_Go on, she said, the flames will cleanse your souls._

_Go on, she said, for you are an independent thinker._

_Go on, she said. What is this life we lead, if you do not take action?_

_And he would have listened. Had it not been for another beautiful boy. A boy who was just fifteen. A boy who broke the witch’s spell and shoved him what real love could feel like._

_The witch was furious, and in her fit of rage, she took the matches from the boy and struck them herself._

_The witch watched their beauty burn, their strength, their snark, their contemplation, their open hearts, their charm, their dreams for the future._

_She watched it all disappear in smoke._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The song mentioned in this chapter is 'When you're gone' by Margot and the nuclear so and so's, and it is also the song the fic is named after.


	5. Truth

Here is the truth about the beautiful Hale family. At least, the truth as Derek knows it. The truth he never dared to tell anyone.

One night, two summers ago, on a warm July evening, Talia Hale, Philip Hale, Cora Hale, Carrie Hale, as well as the children Cady and Johnny Hale, perished in a house fire that Kate Argent started deliberately. Peter Hale was found alive, but unresponsive, with third degree burns covering large parts of his body. They weren’t supposed to be home. But they were. They were supposed to be out looking for their son, but they came home early.

Miroslaw “Stiles” Stilinski was present in the woods at the time of the fire, but did not arrive until it was well under way. The conflagration prevented him from entering the building when he realized there were people trapped inside. He sustained burns to the hands and feet in his rescue attempts. Then he called the fire department on his mobile phone.

When help finally arrived, Mr. Stilinski was found by a lake in the woods, half underwater and curled into a ball. He was unable to answer questions about what happened and appeared to have suffered a head injury. He had to be heavily sedated for many days following the accident.

The formal investigation, led by a man with a strong monetary connection to the Argent family, concluded that the fire had been started by faulty wiring in the mudroom.

Funerals were held for the Hales at the Beacon Hills cemetery.

Stiles Stilinski was not well enough to attend.

The remaining Hale family, Laura and Derek Hale, flew to New York not long after the funeral. Peter Hale was put in a nursing home. He did not recover, and remains, as far as anyone knows, unresponsive.

Laura and Derek Hale, then living in New York, payed to have a new house built on the ashes of the old one.

Stiles Stilinski had no memory of the events surrounding the fire, no memory of it ever happening. His burns healed quickly but he exhibited selective amnesia regarding the events of the summer. He persisted in believing he had injured his head while swimming. Doctors presumed his crippling migraine headaches were caused by unacknowledged grief and guilt. He was heavily medicated and extremely fragile both physically and mentally.

Derek and Laura insisted that they pay for Stiles’ medical bills.

The doctors advised Stiles’ dad to stop explaining the tragedy if Stiles could not recall it himself. It was too much to be told of the trauma fresh every day. Let him remember in his own time. He should not return to the preserve until he’d had significant time to heal. In fact, any measures possible should be taken to keep him away from the preserve in the year immediately after the accident.

In the second year after the accident, the families began to recover. Stiles was finally attending school after may long absences. Eventually, the boy expressed a desire to return to the preserve and the Hale house.

When Laura Hale returned to Beacon Hills for the first time since the accident, the doctors agreed: it might be good for him to do just that.

Back in the woods, perhaps, he would finish healing.

And then, just as the sheriff was going to permit his son to go back to the preserve, Laura’s body was found, torn in two by a wild animal.

***

Stiles Stilinski went home from the Hale barbeque with his father around seven, claiming that he did not feel well. Really, he didn’t want to listen to Talia and Derek fighting.

A few hours later, Stiles made his way back to the Hale house. He knocked, but got no answer, so he went into the woods to try and locate the Hales. He went to the lake, and when he found no one there, he went back. He walked through the preserve and ended up on the edge of the woods facing the house, where he saw Kate Argent standing with an empty jug of gas in her hands.

As she left, Stiles heard the screams coming from inside the house. He ran over and threw himself at the front door, only to find it heavily bolted. The fire was raging, making its way through the house quickly. Another scream.

Stiles coughed heavily from the smoke seeping out from under the door. Covering his mouth and nose with his hands, Stiles ran around the burning building to the back door.

The wooden door was wet with gasoline, heat radiating from inside. Stiles slipped on a puddle outside the door, soaking himself in the fuel. He got back up and reached for the door knob, only to recoil at the feel of hot metal against his hands.

Then, with a thunderous noise, the door collapsed in a wall of flames. The hems of Stiles’ jeans caught fire and he threw himself backwards and down onto the grass. He rolled until his pants stopped burning.

Limping back around to the front of the house, Stiles could see that the top two floors of the house were glowing with heat, and the ground floor was fully alight. The basement level, he couldn’t tell.

“Derek? Laura? Cora? Where are you?” Stiles yelled.

No answer.

Holding down panic, Stiles told himself they probably made it out. No one was hurt. They’d all be fine.

Calm down. It would all be okay. It had to.

“Where are you?” he yelled again. “Talia? Peter?”

Again, no answer.

They were probably in the woods. He just hadn’t found them the first time he looked. Stiles ran, and he ran, calling out names as loud as he could. His feet hit the ground with a strange thud.

There were no one there, but they could be down the road, waiting for help to arrive.

He ran again, back through the woods, strangely hushed in the dark. He told himself over and over: They will be there. They will be fine. All of them.

They will laugh because they’re all safe. They will soak Stiles’ burns in ice water and feel all kinds of lucky.

They will.

But as he ran back to the house and past it, down the road, there was no one there. He dialed 911 on his phone and quickly explained that there was a fire at the Hale residence before hanging up.

He tore back to the house, and when it came into view it was burning, bottom to top. The turret room was lit, the bedrooms were lit, the windows of the basement glowed orange. Everything hot.

He ran to the front door and forced it open. Smoke billowed out. He pulled off his gas soaked sweater and jeans, choking and gagging. He pushed his way in and entered the kitchen stairwell, heading towards the basement where he knew Peter’s kids slept.

Halfway down the steps there was a wall of flames. A wall.

No one had gotten out. And they weren’t coming.

He turned back and ran up toward the upstairs bedrooms, but the wood was burning beneath his feet.

The banister lit up. The stairwell in front of him caved in, throwing sparks.

He reeled back.

He could not go up.

He could not save anyone.

There was nowhere, nowhere, to go, but down.

***

He remembers this like he is living it as he sits on the front steps of his house, still staring at the spot where Derek disappeared into the night. The realization of what happened comes as a fog in his chest, cold, dark, and spreading. He grimaces and hunches over. The icy fog runs from his chest through his back and up his neck. It shoots through his head and down his spine.

Cold, cold, remorse.

He shouldn’t have left the barbeque early.

He should never have checked the woods, the road.

If only he’d gone back to the house faster, maybe he could have gotten someone out. Or warned them before the basement caught.

Maybe he could have found the fire extinguishers and stopped the flames somehow.

Maybe, maybe.

If only, if only.

***

Stiles was found, curled up and shivering, at the edge of the lake. When he was brought back out of the preserve, the Hale house was all but gone. He saw Laura, being held back from running up to the house and then collapsing onto her knees, sobbing in Cora’s jacket. He saw Derek, leaning against a tree, his face lit by the glow of the fire.

He was staring straight ahead at the ashes of the house he’d grown up in. The house where his family had been. Where now only empty bodies were left.

He turned towards Stiles when he passed, but he didn’t seem to really see him.

As Stiles was helped into the ambulance, he thought of the immense grief he saw on Derek’s face. And he cried.

***

He can’t take any of it back.

None of what he did that night. He can’t take any of it back.

He crawls indoors and up to his bedroom on hands of cracked ice, trailing shards of his frozen body behind him. His heels, his kneecaps. Beneath the blankets, he shivers convulsively, pieces of him breaking off onto the pillow. Fingers. Teeth. Jawbone. Collarbone.

Finally, finally, the shivering stops. He begins to warm and melt.

He cries for Peter, who lost his kids and wife.

For Laura and Derek, who lost their entire family.

He cries for the vain, thoughtless complaints he’s made all summer. For his shameful self-pity. For his plans for the future.

He cries with horror that everyone he knows has been burdened by him, and even more with being the cause for so much grief.

He cries because they came back. Even as he realizes that Cora was inside. Even as he realizes that there was a dangerous animal lurking in the woods. There was a dangerous animal lurking in the woods and Derek hadn’t heard from Laura. Shit. Shit, shit, shit.

Oh. His dad’s case files. The night he came home late, exhausted. When he wouldn’t tell Stiles what he had found. And Derek came back. Derek talked to his dad. Derek came to his house.

“I came to find Laura.”

Oh, Derek. Derek, his Derek.

Stiles, Derek, Laura and Cora.

Cora, Derek, Laura and Stiles.

They have all been here, this summer.

And they have not been here.

Yes, and no.

It is Stiles’ fault, and yet they love him anyway. Despite his stupidity. Despite his selfishness, despite his whining, when they – they have nothing anymore. Nothing, but this last summer together.

Laura and Cora are gone. And Derek has lost the only remaining family he had.  Shit.

Laura. Beautiful, beautiful Laura, who came back. She really came back, and now she’s gone. Except she didn’t leave him. They stayed, because they knew he needed them. Because they knew he needed to remember. Because they knew he needed closure. And Derek needed it too.

Laura died and he didn’t even notice, because she didn’t leave. She showed up next to Cora, maybe looking a little younger, but Stiles didn’t question it. He was just glad to have the Hales back. Even if they weren’t the Hale he really wanted to see.

They have said they loved him.

Stiles felt it in Derek’s kiss. His real, so real, kiss. Despite his grief, he kissed him.

He felt it in Laura’s hugs.

He felt it in Cora’s laugh.

He guesses that’s why they’ve been here.

Because he needed them.

***

As usual, no one is visible at the Hale house until his feet make sounds in the grass.

Then Cora appears in the doorway. When she sees his face, she stops.

“You’ve remembered,” she says.

Stiles nods.

“You’ve remembered everything?”

“I didn’t know if you would still be here,” he says.

Cora reaches out to hold Stiles’ hand. She feels warm and substantial, though she looks pale, washed out, bags under her eyes.

And young.

She is only fifteen.

“We can’t stay much longer. It’s getting harder and harder.”

Stiles nods.

“Laura’s got it the worst, but I’m feeling it too. It’s fresher for her. It’s harder, in the beginning.”

“Where will you go?” Stiles asks.

“When we leave?”

“Yeah.”

She shrugs. “Same place as when you’re not here. Same place as we’ve been. It’s like –“ Cora pauses, runs a hand through her hair. “It’s like a rest. It’s like nothing, in a way. And honestly, Stiles, I love you, but I’m fucking tired. I just want to lie down and be done. All this happened a very long time ago, for me.”

Stiles looks at her. “I’m so, so sorry, Cora,” he says, feeling the tears well behind his eyes.

“Not your fault,” she says. “I mean, you had nothing to do with it. You shouldn’t carry the weight of it,” she says. “Be sad, be sorry – but don’t shoulder it. Will you tell Derek that as well? I think he needs to hear it.”

Stiles nods.

Laura comes outside and walks towards them. Stiles realizes she probably wasn’t there until moments before. She hugs him. Her hair is dim and the edges of her mouth look dry and cracked. “I’m sorry I didn’t do all this better, Stiles,” she says. “I got one chance to be here, and I don’t know. I drew it out, told so many lies. At least I got a few more years.” She looks sadly over at Cora.

“It’s all right,” Stiles says.

“I want to be an accepting person, but I am so full of leftover rage. I imagined I’d be sainty and wise, but instead I’ve been jealous of you, mad at the rest of my family. It’s just messed up and now it’s done,” she says, burying her face in Stiles’ shoulder.

He puts his arms around her. “You were yourself, Laura,” he says. “I don’t want anything else.”

“I have to go now,” Cora says. “I can’t be here any longer. I’m going out to the preserve.”

No. Please.

Don’t go. Don’t leave. Cora, Cora.

I need you.

That is what Stiles wants to say, to shout, but he does not.

And part of him wants to bleed across the Japanese garden or melt into a puddle of grief.

But he does not do that, either. He does not complain or ask for pity. He cries instead. He cries and squeezes Cora’s hand and kisses her on her warm cheek and tries to memorize her face.

They hold hands as the three of them walk towards the trees.

Stiles stops at the edge. Laura kisses his cheek. Cora hugs him. “Take care of our brother, will you?” Laura asks.

“I will,” Stiles promises, and he finds that he’s never wanted to keep a promise as much as he wants to keep this one.

Stiles let’s go of them, and they grab each other’s hands and walk calmly out into the trees until Stiles can no longer see them.

When he turns back towards the house, Derek is there.

“You saw her?” Derek asks, once Stiles is close enough. “Laura?” He doesn’t seem surprised.

Stiles nods. “And Cora.” He pauses. “I guess I’m more messed up than I thought I was.”  

“Laura was killed by a rogue Alpha,” Derek says. “I don’t know who it is, but I’m going to find out.”

Stiles stares at him, and Derek stares back. They are silent for long minutes. Stiles is the first to speak.

“I am so sorry, Derek,” he says. “I am so, so sorry, and I will never be able to make it up to you.”

Derek kisses him, and Stiles can feel him shaking, and he wraps his arms around Derek like he could ground him, anchor him.

“No one deserves what happened to you, Derek. No one. I am so sorry,” he says again, once their kiss is finished.

Derek merely shakes his head and let’s Stiles hold him. They stand there for a long time. Derek doesn’t tell Stiles that he’s crazy. That he’s damaged. Instead, what finally comes out of his mouth is: “I don’t want to stay here.”

“You don’t have to,” Stiles promises.

***

One night, after Stiles has spent most day in bed, Derek comes in through the window. His head has been cracking over and piecing itself together over and over and over all day, and Stiles is exhausted from it.

“Derek?” Stiles breathes out. His headache is receding, slowly. He opens his eyes and blinks up at Derek.

“Stiles,” Derek replies, stepping closer, slowly.

“What’s going on?” The light from the moon shines in through the open window, illuminating Derek. “Is that blood on your hands?” he asks, feeling alarmed.

“It’s not mine,” Derek promises. “It’s over. It’s over.” He sounds defeated, drained, like all the fight has finally left him. Like he’s finally used up his last bit of strength. 

“What are you talking about?” Stiles sits up slowly, the last remnants of his migraine rattling around inside his head, threatening to roll down to his stomach and make him throw up.

“Kate,” Derek says. “The Alpha.” Stiles frowns. “They’re gone.”

“Gone? What do you mean gone? You found out who the Alpha is?”

Derek sits down on the edge of Stiles’ bed, very carefully, staring down at his hands. This close Stiles can tell that the blood on Derek’s hands is mostly dried.

“It was Peter,” Derek says quietly, shaking his head. “I should have known.”

“Should have known what?” Stiles asks.

“He killed Laura.” Derek looks up then and Stiles sees glowing red eyes staring back at him.

“I figured it out, so I tracked him through the preserve. He had been tracking Kate, and when I found them, he had killed her. And then I killed him.” Derek’s voice breaks, and Stiles wraps his arms around the shaking boy.

Stiles listens as Derek cries, just holding him. He doesn’t think there’s anything he can say, so he just stays quiet. 

There will be another day, and after that, yet another day. One of those days Derek might be okay. Or he won’t.

***

Stiles sleeps for what might be days. He can’t get up.

He opens his eyes, it’s light out.

He opens his eyes, it’s dark.

Sometimes Derek is there, in the doorway. Sometimes it’s his dad. Sometimes the door is closed.

Finally, he stands. In the bathroom mirror, his hair is no longer short. It’s starting to get long, no longer the weird buzz cut he got after the accident.

He is not sure who that boy in the mirror is.

Downstairs, Derek and the sheriff are talking at the kitchen table. They both have a cup of coffee in front of them.

His dad looks up from his cup. “Are you feeling better?” she asks.

Stiles nods. “I am.”

“You don’t look much better,” Derek comments.

“Shut up,” Stiles says, but he’s smiling.

His dad stands up and gives Stiles a hug, one of his long, concerned hugs, but Stiles doesn’t speak to him about anything.

Not yet. Not for a while, maybe.

Anyway, he knows he remembers.

Stiles can tell he knows.

He sits down in the free chair besides Derek and asks what they were talking about.

***

_Once upon a time there was a king and queen who had three children. And the queen’s brother, the prince, had a wife and two children. They were beautiful, all the children, only something bad happened._

_Something stupid, criminal, terrible, something avoidable, something that never should have happened._

_The family died in a fire, all except one._

_Only one was left, and he –_

_No, that’s not right._

_The family died in a fire, all except one boy and one girl and one man._

_The man was Peter Hale, but he was so damaged from the fire that he never became himself again._

_The boy and girl. Derek and Laura._

_The children, they were crazy and sad. They were filled with guilt for being alive, filled with pain in their heads and fear of ghosts, filled with nightmares and strange compulsions, punishments for being alive when the others were dead._

_The man, Peter, was mad with grief. His mind was a broken mess of fear and grief and anger, and his body was not much better._

_He tapped into his anger, his rage, and used his power to change himself into a monstrous creature. He ran through the woods at night, and when he came across a girl, a girl with the power of an Alpha, he took her power away from her._

_And the princesses, the fathers, the king, and the children, they crumbled like eggshells in the fire, powdery and beautiful – for they were always beautiful. They crumbled, just like the ivory wolf statue that had once decorated the Hale kitchen but was now a part of its ashes. It seemed as if this tragedy marked the end of the family._

_And perhaps it did._

_But perhaps not._

_The last boy. Derek. Once he was the only one left, once everyone else had succumbed to flames or darkness or madness, he still had his love. He still had his prince._

_“The family died in a fire,” they say, the people of Beacon Hills, California. “The house caught fire,” they say. “Remember some summers ago?”_

_Yet the remaining boy, Derek, he knows that tragedy is not glamorous._

_He knows that it doesn’t play out in life as it does on a stage or between the pages of a book. It is neither a punishment meted out nor a lesson conferred. Its horrors are not attributable to one single person._

_Tragedy is ugly and tangled, stupid and confusing._

_That is what Derek knows._

_And he knows that the stories about his family are both true and untrue._

_There are endless variations._

_And people will continue to tell them._

***

His full name is Miroslaw Stilinski, but everyone calls him Stiles.

He lives in Beacon Hills, California, with his dad and his boyfriend.

He has just turned seventeen.

He owns a comfortable pillow, a powder blue jeep and a book of fairy tales.

He was the victim of a foolish, deluded crime that became a tragedy. A crime that still stands unsolved.

Yes, it is true that he fell in love with a boy and that everyone that boy loved died.

That has been the main thing to know about Stiles, the only thing about him for a very long time, though he did not know it himself.

But there must be more to know.

There will be more.

***

His full name is Miroslaw Stilinski, but everyone calls him Stiles.

He suffers migraines. He does not suffer fools.

He likes a twist of meaning.

His boyfriend’s name is Derek Hale.

Stiles is all he has left.

They endure.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I realize that this fic is confusing... I've tried to make everything as clear as possible, thought I'm not sure that I really succeeded. I'm not as happy with this as I could have been, but I don't know if trying to change it would really help.
> 
> Also, there is no way I could have made anything like this if there wasn't for the original book, 'We Were Liars'. I could not have come up with all this by myself. If you liked this story, I highly recommend that you read the book as well.

**Author's Note:**

> [tumblr](http://illusemywords.tumblr.com/)


End file.
